Unweddable
by Juliette's solo act
Summary: A new legislation five years after the Final Battle forces purebloods to marry muggle-borns, and Hermione receives several proposals including one from the arrogant, spoiled Draco Malfoy . In order to escape the prospect of an unhappy marriage, she must make herself unweddable. But she hadn't counted on Draco's perseverance or her own human heart.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello everyone, long time no see. This is the first of three opening chapters for three different stories I'll be posting here in the next few days (hopefully, but knowing me it might take a little longer than that to get around to it).**

**Basically, I took a break from writing for a while to get back to reading and in doing so have somehow managed to come up with three completely different ideas for long fics almost simultaneously. I love having new ideas and can't wait to put them on paper, but writing 100 000 word stories does take some doing and I'm trying to get into med school so I don't exactly have much time. **

**Ramble aside, I'll be posting the three opening chapters and only continuing with the one that gets the most/best reviews so that I know I'll be writing something that people enjoy. This may seem like a stupid idea, but it's the only solution I can find.**

**So bear that in mind when you come to that new little 'comments' box at the bottom of the screen. If you liked this story and want to read more, review lots and lots. If not, then thanks for helping me narrow it down (I'm terrible at making decisions).**

**Also, and this is important, I'm writing this on a thing that doesn't have spell-check so if you see any mistakes please let me know, or I'll be really embarrassed.**

**(Disclaimer: I own nothing but any OCs I manage to shove into the story - although all of this happens five years after the war is over, so I guess I can claim some of the ideas that I use here.)**

* * *

DECREE No. 419876113

_By order of the Minister for Magic, the honorable Kingsley Shacklebolt, this decree shall be effective from the sixth day of the seventh month of the year 2003._

_The reign of blood-supremacists has been one of horror and death, culminating in the Final Battle on the second day of the fifth month of the year 1998. Thus, in an initiative to put an end to the false idea that one of purely wizarding ancestry is in any way superior to those born of two muggles, was born this decree. _

_Let it henceforth be understood that all of those descending from a 'pureblood' family must enter into marriage with a muggle-born witch or wizard. This binding contract must be entered into willingly and consummated on the wedding night so that grounds for annulment cannot be found. Divorce is indeed possible, if living together should prove detrimental to the health and well-being of either partner, but should a decision to divorce be undertaken both individuals will once again have to follow the rules and regulations stated in this decree._

_Witches and wizards must make their proposals by the age of 21, and must be married within their 21st year._

_Should this age have already been surpassed before the publication of this decree, the proposal must be made and accepted before the year 2003 has culminated. The period of engagement must not exceed six months from the date the proposal is signed if the two parties are older than 21, and all traditional routes of marriage must be followed so as not to give grounds for annulment._

_A 'pureblood' shall be defined as an individual who can trace purely wizards as their ancestors for four or more generations, whereas a muggleborn witch or wizard is one descended from two non-magical parents._

_Those who can only trace back two or three generations of solely wizarding blood shall be exempt from this decree on the grounds that they are 'half-bloods' and thus have the desired mixed lineage already._

_Failure to comply with the regulations stated herein will result in a punishment tailored according to the status and gross yearly income of the non-compliant individual and is left to the discression of the Grand Overseer, through whom all marriage proposals pertaining to the union of 'pure' and 'muggle' bloods shall pass. Refusal to partake in this decree may lead to a trial and imprisonment, and will be treated as severely as any other legal transgression._

_Should an individual be deemed unweddable by a court of law, with more than three character witnesses of the prosecution's own choosing, they will be exempt from this law._

A 'snap' brought Hermione back to reality, her hands balled into tight fists. Dangling from the end of her (rather expensive) phoenix feather quill was the nib which she had accidentally broken off in her anger, forgetting that she had been clutching it a little too tightly. It had been a week since the decree had been published, and she was still seething. All her petitioning against this new law had completely been ignored - she was going to murder Kinglsey when they had their next Order meeting. The Order of the Phoenix lived on, despite the fact that the war had been over for five years, but they only rarely met. It was now more a preventative measure than a defensive one, run solely to monitor extremist groups and drastically reduce the likelihood of another war.

The Order meetings were really the only time she ever saw people from her past. Occasionally, she was invited to dinner at Grimauld Place with Harry and Ginny (mercifully they'd redecorated so she wasn't verbally abused by Mrs Black every time she opened the door), but these invitations were few and far between. She understood, really. Harry had been a fully-fledged Auror for four years now, having taken the fast track qualification that had been opened to them all. She had taken it too, along with most of the group that once called themselves 'Dumbledore's Army', but had never intended to become an Auror. It had been more of a gap year for her, a year in which she could distract herself from the terrible past and daunting future. Harry had risen quickly among the Aurors, and was now being sent all over the world on the Ministry's most dangerous missions. And Ginny never left his side. She had proven herself equally (if not slightly better, due to her ability to rationalise and Harry's rash self-sacrificing instincts) as good an Auror as her fiancee, much to Hermione's delight. The world needed more strong women.

As for Ron, he had left the Auror training at the same time as Hermione after realising that his family would always come first in his heart. Slowly, he had pulled George back to the land of the living, both grieving together over the loss of their brother. To everybody's surprise, Percy abandoned his position at the Ministry and returned home to help. The three of them had restocked the twins' shop and since then had managed to open stores across the country. Hermione's relationship with Ron had suffered because of the devastating loss of the Weasley family, and they had parted amicably.

Despite promises to remain the best of friends forever, life soon took over for the Golden Trio. Hermione moved out of her parents' house and into a small studio in London so as to be closer to work. Her stellar examination results, coupled with a glowing reference from Headmistress McGonagall meant that she was able to climb up the rankings in the Ministry with relative ease. Of course, her fame and the large part she had played in the Final Battle had helped too, but she liked to think that it was her intelligence that people had hired her for. She knew she was at least partly lying to herself, but it eased her conscience.

Hermione pulled out her wand and murmured a quick _reparo_ spell to fix her broken quill, then turned back to the parchment in front of her. She understood why they had felt the need to pass this law, but she still resented the imposition on her freedom. The largest flaw in their plan was that the purebloods were, with lamentably few exceptions, a terrible bunch of people. She need only think of Draco Malfoy to remember why she had opposed this new law so strongly. Arrogant, egocentric, spoilt... And those were only the most polite adjectives she could muster to describe them.

Her stomach gurgled loudly, interrupting her mental rant before she could work herself up into a fury and break something a little more valuble than her quill. She couldn't concentrate on her work any longer so decided to go out for lunch. Hermione left instructions with her young secretary to deliver the latest draft of the House Elves Rights Bill to Amanda Finch while she was out, and left the department as swiftly as possible to avoid stunned looks from her juniors. Alright, so she didn't go out much during the day - there was no need to stare at her as though she'd caught spattergoit. She turned once more out of habit to look at the shining golden letters on the arch above the entrance to her department. _Department for Rights_ - the three little words that gave her world its meaning.

Hermione settled herself in the little cafe in the grand foyer of the Ministry of Magic, telling herself that the reason she couldn't bring herself to venture much further from her office was that it was raining outside. In reality, it was because even five years on from the Final Battle, she was constantly tailed by photographers hoping to catch her doing something scandalous. As it was, she could barely remember the last time she'd been outside on the streets. She flooed directly from the fireplace in her office to the fireplace in her flat every day, and ate all her meals in one of these two locations.

_Tomorrow I'll go out_, she told herself as she told herself every day, before attacking the bacon sandwich before her and demolishing it within minutes. She beckoned the waitress over to pay for her meal, hoping that she wouldn't be one of _those_. Younger people still came up to her to ask for autographs or photographs, and almost everyone stared at her with awe. Sometimes people would even thank her for what she'd done. Hermione knew that she should be flattered and that a normal person might even enjoy the attention, but she couldn't help but be utterly embarrassed.

Thankfully, the waitress gave her little more than a second glance and Hermione scurried back to her office. Later, she would wish that she had spent a little more time trying to enjoy that morning, because things were only about to get worse.

"Miss Granger? These came for you from Lavinia Jones' office," Hermione's secretary said, handing the bushy-haired young woman a bundle of letters in cream envelopes tied together with a red ribbon. Hermione's heart sank and bile rose in her throat. She knew full well what those letters were.

"Thank you, Lucy. Why don't you take your lunch break now?" she suggested, trying to keep a modicum of calm about her while her heart engaged in a boxing match with her stomach.

The young girl nodded and left Hermione to her own dark thoughts. The moment she was cocooned in her office, Hermione tore the ribbon from the pack of letters and began ripping them open.

_Alfonso Pietro Alexus Manelli requests the hand in marriage of Hermione Jean Granger... Michael James Gordon III asks for the honour of a union with Hermione Jean Granger..._

Thirteen letters dropped from her hands to the floor in quick succession. The fourteenth made her pause.

_Draco Lucius Malfoy humbly requests the hand in marriage of Hermione Jean Granger_.

Hermione couldn't help but snort at the wording of that proposal. As if Malfoy could ever be humble. She tossed it aside, dismissing it as some sort of twisted joke on his part. She wouldn't have put it past the pale boy she used to know to send her a false wedding proposal just to ridicule her.

The fifteenth and final letter would have made her sit down with a bump had she been standing. As it was, her comically wide eyes were the only physical indication of her surprise.

_Ronald Billius Weasley_.

Ron. Awkward, bumbling, _familiar_ Ron was asking her to marry him. An impersonal note, almost a memo, an 'oh by the way, you're the person I've decided I want to spend the rest of my life with'. And no forewarning, nothing to spare her the shock of opening his letter. A part of her, a large part, was so angry at him for his thoughtless approach to their marriage that it drove all else from her brain. But there was a tiny, niggling voice in the back of her head that kept asking itself what it would be like to say yes.

As a little girl, Hermione had often wondered whether she and Ron would end up old and married. In her imagination, it was a comfortable view of the future. But comfortable was all it was - there was no love, no passion between them. There was no challenge or excitement. The only kiss they had shared had been strangely exhilarating, but only because her blood had coursed with adrenaline for the oncoming battle. Their one grand romantic gesture was tangled up forever, completely overshadowed by the war. It was difficult to imagine a life together now. In fact, Hermione realised with an unpleasant jolt that she could no longer picture his face clearly. Time had blurred the mental image she carried of him to nothing more than a mop of red hair and some freckles.

It had been over a year since they'd last seen each other. Hermione was still regularly invited to the Weasley's for the Christmas holidays at the Burrow, but last year Ron had been called away on urgent business in America over Christmas and Hermione had had a case in Australia over the New Year, so they'd missed each other entirely.

She had once loved him like a brother, but now it was so long since they had last spoken that she barely knew him.

With a sigh, she gathered the pieces of parchment scattered around her desk and floor and shut them away in a draw along with the detested decree itself. _Out of sight, out of mind_, she told herself, partly as comfort and partly to remind herself that she had better things to dedicate her intellect to. Like her study of Goblin Welfare in Germany, for example. That would surely be a perfect distraction from the distasteful topic of the marriage law, as it involved a lot of research and therefore a lot of reading.

It proved to be an ineffective solution - her mind simply danced across the page and straight back to the small mound of proposals she had locked away. She simply couldn't face getting married right now. She was still so young, and she still had so much she wanted to do. Besides, most of the purebloods who had made her an offer didn't seem the type to want a working wife. They all seemed to regard her as a prize trophy: the ultimate mudblood. She shivered and rubbed her right arm, where the faint white scars of that despicable word were hidden away from prying eyes under a long-sleeved blouse.

Call her an old-fashioned woman, blame it on the classic romantic epics she had read as a little girl, but she wanted to marry for love. She didn't want to have to spend the rest of her life with someone simply because the ministry had dictated that it must be so. Somehow, she had to think of a way out of this ridiculous mess.

* * *

Hermione glanced at the small golden clock on her desk, a congratulatory present from her parents, and was startled to see that it was already six o'clock. The enchanted window that made up a large part of the right-hand wall showed that the rain had cleared, and left in its place a blazing evening sun.

The long fingers of the golden sun seemed to reach into her office and beckon her outside and for once, Hermione graciously acquiesced. Closing the thick tome on Goblin history that she had been pretending to read for at least the past couple of hours, she resolved to visit her favourite antiquitarian wizarding bookstore in Diagon Alley, convincing herself that the ordeal with the marriage proposals had earned her the right to buy a new book or three.

She bustled around her office briefly, sorting away the various bits of parchment that littered her desk until she could actually see the mahogany wood again. Now that there was nothing else she could possibly think of that would keep her in the office a moment longer, she wriggled into her blazer and left.

"Lucy, I think you can call it a day now." The girl looked up from a pile of papers she had been filing, trying to hide the shock that flitted across her features. _Honestly_, Hermione thought, _ you'd think I never leave while the sun's still shining._ Actually, now that she thought about it, it did seem rather out of character to leave before the stars where out. "I'm just about to leave myself, and there's nothing that needs doing that can't wait for tomorrow," she said to her young assistant, who leapt up with a grateful smile.

"I'll open the floo connection right away, Miss Granger," Lucy said, reaching for her wand.

"Actually, I think I'll walk home tonight." This time, Lucy could not prevent her jaw from dropping. "Goodnight," Hermione said with a smile. The girl's expression reminded her so much of Ron's. And just like that, the marriage contract was back in the forefront of her mind. She shook her head in annoyance, as though trying to dislodge the thoughts that were slowly consuming her waking hours.

She'd forgotten what it was like to take the telephone box out of the Ministry, and so was completely unprepared to leave her stomach behind as it shot up with a jolt. Once she felt as though all her body parts had been reunited, she stepped out onto the pavement only to tread in some chewing gum that had been spat out onto the street. Things were certainly a lot dirtier than she remembered. A quick vanishing charm took care of the chewing gum, and she was off.

Hermione wound her way through the narrow streets of Wizarding London, stopping every so often when a particularly colourful window display caught her eye. Everything seemed to radiate happiness in the warm golden sunshine, and she found herself smiling for no reason whatsoever.

She caught a glimpse of Dean Thomas behind the counter in Ollivander's, laughing as a young child shot red sparks out of the end of her wand and caused a shelf of boxes to collapse. Hermione wondered whether he and Luna were still together, realising for the second time that day that she knew very little about her friends' lives.

She hurried past Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, eyes averted from the purple storefront. She didn't want to think about Ron right now, and even the slightest flash of a head of ginger hair might bring back the marriage proposal and all her buried emotions. There was a loud bang, and the door to the shop opened to release a noxious yellow cloud of gas. People began flooding out, coughing and laughing.

"All damages must be paid for," she heard Percy call in his best authoritative voice. Hermione dashed away, rounding the next corner at a breakneck speed. Finally, she had reached her destination - a crooked old tudor house, several stories shorter than the surrounding buildings. Old leather-bound books were piled up haphazardly in the window front, as crooked as the building in which they resided.

Hermione pushed open the door and smiled at the familiar smell of yellowing pages that greeted her.

"Miss Granger, how lovely to see you!" A little old man, almost bent double with silver glasses forever slipping off the tip of his nose, rushed up to greet her and shook her hand vigorously.

"How've you been, Mr Jarlock?" she said, returning the grin he gave her.

"Not too bad, not too bad. I've got some lovely new muggle classics you'll enjoy - ordered them in especially for you, my dear," he said, tugging her towards a second room that branched off the main one. "They're at the back, just left of - but why am I telling you? You already know where to go!" He relinquished her hand and gave her a gentle nudge in the right direction. Hermione picked her way through the piles of books that littered the floor, careful not to knock any of the teetering towers that looked as though they were constantly on the verge of collapse, and settled herself in the corner.

She ran her index finger along the leather spines of the books on the shelf, marvelling at the feel of the gold embossed letters under her skin. She skimmed the titles until she found what she was looking for: the last Dickens she had yet to read. Tugging it out from among the other books, she turned to the first page carefully, fully aware of the delicate state the yellowed pages were in.

Time slowed and stopped altogether as the black characters danced before her eyes, swirling into words and sentences of beautifully crafted English. Soon she had completely forgotten everything else, all human concerns vanishing from her head.

"So, Granger, what did you think of my proposal? Must have come as a bit of a shock to you - did you ever think you'd see the day someone actually asked you to marry them?" And with those words, reality came rushing back in. Hermione slammed the book shut, looking up angrily into the face of the tall blond whose languid drawl had so easily shattered her snatched moment of peace.

"Malfoy." It was less of a greeting and more of an insult, the way his name was propelled from her lips, "Nice to see your sense of humour hasn't improved over the years. Why, I hardly recognised you as the boy who'd go out of his way to antagonise me," she said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Never lost that ferret look, though, did you? Guess Moody's charm was a little stronger than he thought."

The blond flushed and the sudden infusion of blood to his previously pale face made Hermione take a closer look. She had to admit, what she saw wasn't altogether unpleasant. Time had been kind to Draco Malfoy. He'd stopped slicking his hair back, and instead let it sit naturally. Rebel strands here and there would fall into his face, bringing his delicate features more definition. His skin had lost that unhealthy, pale sheen and was now slightly more sun-kissed.

He was taller too, and more muscular if his arms were any indication of the rest of his body. The blue t-shirt he wore was tight enough that she could see how well-defined his body was, and it effortlessly accentuated the blue undertone in his unreadable silver eyes. His eyes met and captured hers, and for a moment she struggled to remember to breathe. Then his characteristic smirk spread across his lips, and the spell shattered.

"Well, whenever you're ready to discuss preliminaries, you know where to find me," he said, turning to leave. She reached out and grabbed his wrist.

"First of all, I don't have a clue where to 'find' you and I'm not sure I care to find out. Second, what the hell makes you think I'd accept your ridiculous proposal?" she spat.

"It's the law, Granger. And here in the real world, you won't get rewarded for breaking the rules." He looked down at his wrist which was still encircled by her delicate fingers. She let go as if burned.

"Nowhere in the decree does it say that I have to marry you, Malfoy."

"No, but you do have to marry someone and it's not like anyone else will have offered." Hermione's eyes narrowed. The arrogant prick was starting to get on her last nerve.

"Actually, for your information, I've had fourteen propsals besides your one. Not that it's any of your business at all." She did try not to sound too smug, but she did so want to wipe that self-satisfied smirk from his face. She watched as his eyes widened and his grin dropped slightly. _Advantage Hermione_, she thought.

"Lovely catching up with you. Try not to take it too personally when I say that I hope it's a long time before we do this again," she said, leaving the room before Malfoy even had a chance to reply.

"Miss Granger, leaving so soon? I haven't even shown you the new Wizarding books you might like. We have an excellent one on the history of the Hogwarts founders that I thought might interest you," the little man said, popping out from behind a tower of books that bore an uncanny resemblance to the leaning tower of Pisa.

"I'm sorry, Mr Jarlock, but I really do have to go. Would you mind putting this on hold for me?" she said, handing him the Dickens that she hadn't had time to put back.

"Store policy, I'm afraid, dictates that I can't put anything on hold. However, you are one of the few who reads Muggle classics, so I'm sure it'll be here waiting when you come back," he replied apologetically. They said their goodbyes, and Hermione was ushered out of the store by the tinkling of the brass bell above the door. She inwardly cursed Malfoy for interrupting her favourite activity all the way back to her flat. He really did have the worst timing.

* * *

Hermione's fitful sleep was interrupted by a loud tapping noise. She threw herself out of bed to open the window for the brown owl, which she recognised as a Ministry delivery owl. In her bleary eyed state, she reached out to take the letter tied to its leg before paying, and she was nipped sharply on the finger as punishment for her absentmindedness.

"Alright, alright, calm down," she grumbled, dropping the correct change into the pouch of the owl and untying its load. It have a haughty hoot before flying out of her window with what she could have sworn was a reproachful backwards glance.

The letter turned out to be a late-notice summons to the law courts for that morning. The court number, and the ungodly hour at which she'd received the summons were all the clues Hermione needed to figure out that the trial would be one of a Death Eater. In the beginning, this sort of trial had taken up most of the Ministry's time but of late they'd grown few and far between as most had been caught and dealt with.

She wondered if it would be the Death Eater that Harry and Ginny had been off chasing across the globe. Mulciber was one of the few Death Eaters left outstanding, which had surprised Hermione. She'd met Mulciber once and he had struck her as a man with an intellect to rival Goyle's.

Hermione shook herself into action, grabbing the purple cloak and hat of the Wizengamot trials from her wardrobe, as well as her favourite phoenix quill and some sober black ink. She would no doubt be called upon in the decision-making process, as head of the Department for Rights, and wanted to make sure that she knew every single detail of the trial. If there was time, she'd ask Lucy to find some background information on the trial beforehand.

Hermione had forgotten that the floo network into the Ministry was bound to be completely crowded with people flooding in for the trial. It therefore took a long time for her to be able to appear in one of the generic fireplaces in the centre of the Ministry, and she was covered in soot by that time as she'd had to use one of the less frequented (and thus less frequently cleaned) fireplaces.

By the time she had cleaned herself up, she was already cutting it close. She'd have to forego her usual preparation for a trial and rely solely on her memory. She found her seat, three places to the right of Kingsley, and returned his questioning glance with a shrug and a half-smile as she straightened her hat.

Fewer members of the public had gathered to watch this trial than ever before, perhaps because it was still very early in the morning or because it had been less highly publicised than the others. Hermione suspected the true reason was closer to the fact that more and more people were just trying to put the war behind them and move on with their lives. Every trial reminded them that they'd lost someone.

As she had predicted, the harrowed, broken-looking man who was marched into the courtroom was Mulciber, and Harry followed behind him, wand trained at his back in case he was stupid enough to make a move to escape. Hermione tried surreptitiously to catch her friend's eye, but Harry's weary green eyes did not look up once from where they were burning a hole into the prisoner's back.

_He looks so tired_, she thought to herself with a sudden pang of concern. She looked around for Ginny, who would normally have been right beside Harry, but she could not spot the red-head anywhere in the crowd. Before Hermione could begin to draw conclusions from her absence, Mulciber was seated roughly and the trial began in earnest. Hermione simply did not have time to worry about her friends any longer, so furiously was her quill sprinting across the parchment.

"Miss Granger, if you please," Kingsley said, indicating that it was Hermione's turn to speak.

"Thank you, Minister." Hermione stood and turned to the jury. "The accused stands trial today for crimes of a heinous nature against humanity. He has taken the lives of many of our fellow human beings, for the simple reason that their blood is not as 'pure' as his own. He has blindly followed, and, dare I say, revelled in following the doctrines of Lord Voldemort. He has done nothing that would serve to redeem these acts of violent destruction of life. Quite the opposite in fact - he has run from the course of justice, fearing for his own life. This act of selfishness can do nothing but condemn him further in my eyes.

"As for his basic human rights, it is my belief that he forfeited these inalienable rights by the acts that he has committed. In killing, he has blackened his soul. I therefore see no lawful reason why he should not be condemned with the rest of his kind to the Dementor's Kiss."

Hermione sat down, her brief speech over. It was not the best speech she had ever given, nor the longest, but she felt that it would not do the labour the point too much. She sensed that everybody in the courtroom wished the trial was over so that they could return to their normal lives and banish the past once more from their minds.

The verdict was a unanimous 'guilty', as she had imagined it would be, and the shell of a man was dragged to await transportation to Azkaban. Gone was the sense of satisfaction that she had gained from the first trials of Death Eaters. Now, all she felt was empty as she watched the man meekly allowing himself to be dragged away.

A low buzz of chatter filled the courtroom as the witches and wizards filed out and back to their day-to-day lives. Hermione tried to edge past a chubby, middle-aged witch discreetly in order to make her way towards Harry, but the rotund witch let out a squeal and grasped Hermione's hand in her own pudgy moist one.

"Wonderful speech, Miss Granger. You have such a way with words," she said in a squeaky voice, her eyes shining and her cheeks flushed under a layer of powder.

"Er... Thanks," Hermione said, ironically inarticulate, and trying in vain to extract her hand from the warm grasp of the other witch.

"I mean, I know they don't call you the 'brains' of the Golden Trio for nothing, but I didn't know that you were so clever. That's the reason I came to this trial, you know. Of course, I do want justice to be served to those horrible, horrible men, but I had a feeling you would be here and look at that: I was right!" The woman continued to chatter on in the same manner, a cloyingly sweet and naive tone of voice that rang distinctly false with Hermione.

"Well, it was lovely talking to you, but I'm afraid -"

"Oh, don't say another word. I know you're very busy - you're just such a role model to us all, you see. The way you've risen to such a position of power in only four years is simply inspiring..." Again, Hermione's feeble excuses were lost under a deluge of words. Every time she tried to leave and head back to the safety of her office, the woman would simply start up againt.

"Listen, I'm sorry but I have to be somewhere," Hermione said, finally, wrenching her hand out of the sweaty paw of the round witch. She hurried away, conscious that she had interrupted the woman half-way through a sentence, but finding that she didn't actually care about being polite any longer.

She glanced around the nearly-empty courtroom, looking without hope for the shock of unruly black hair, but did not see Harry anywhere. Hermione sighed and sped off towards her office.

She could manage nothing more than a cursory nod at Lucy, feeling as though she had exceeded her capacity to speak or to listen for that day, and barricaded herself in her office. As she once more took out the regulations of the new marriage law from their hiding place in the forbidden drawer, she began to wonder whether she actually enjoyed tormenting herself by searching for any loophole. Flashes of her arguments with Kingsley came back to her as she skimmed the familiar words.

_"IT'S AN IMPINGEMENT UPON BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS!" she yelled, red in the face. Kingsley look distinctly ill at ease, and glanced around to see if anyone was staring. Luckily, the few people around were too polite to gawp outright, choosing instead to glance more surreptitiously at the wildly gesticulating woman._

_"Hermione, please calm down -" the Minister began._

_"Calm down? CALM DOWN? I'll calm down when you and the bunch of idiots you call a cabinet retract this proposition and remove your heads from your backsides!"_

_The Minister's brow creased in confusion at the muggle terminology, but his countenance darkened considerably at her torrent of insults. She was overstepping her limit._

_"Control yourself - don't make a scene. You're beginning to embarrass not only yourself but the Ministry too. I don't want to have to ask you again. Please remember that I am the Minister for Magic."_

_Hermione was not yet so consumed by rage that she didn't notice the dangerous tone his voice had taken on. She nodded, abashed._

_"Thank you. Listen, Hermione, I could really use your support on this act," he said in a much more weary voice. Hermione's mouth opened to declare that she would never, ever support such a foul piece of legislation, but he held up a silencing hand. "Not support then,but at least not open condemnation. You know that I haven't had the easiest job since I was elected Minister, what with the Death Eater trials, the Dementor issue, the reparations, the collapse in muggle relations..." He suddenly looked much older. Hermione noticed lines on his face that she hadn't seen before, and guilt drowned her anger. "People love you - the brains of the Golden Trio, a strong role model for hundreds of women out there. It would mean a lot to me if you could just... not make a fuss."_

The last four words of their conversation echoed in her head as she read the final paragraph of the decree. _Deemed unweddable... exempt from this law... make a fuss_. The dots slowly began to join in her head as she spotted the one loophole open to her. There was still a chance that she could regain control of her own future, if she could only be brave enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Hi everyone. I'm so so so sorry that it has taken me a horribly, unthinkably long time to upload the second chapter of this. To be honest, I should be working on one of the other fics that I've started more recently, but it felt like time to revisit this one because I'm blocked for the other two (besides, I told my little sister this one as a bed-time story and she liked it - highest praise of all).**

**Anyway, feel free to leave scathing reviews telling me what a mean person I've been for abandoning this for such a long time - I deserve it entirely.**

**Other than that, sorry again, and enjoy (hopefully).**

**P.S. Tell me if Draco or Hermione have changed a huge amount from the way they were in chapter one, because I might have changed my characterisation a bit by accident.**

* * *

Hermione arrived at work early that morning (or rather, earlier than she normally arrived since she was always there at least an hour before her job actually began), please and more than a little surprised to find that Lucy was already behind her desk.

"Good morning, Lucy," Hermione chirped brightly. The girl started and hurriedly stowed the latest issue of 'Witch Weekly' magazine in a drawer in her desk. From the brief glimpse of the front cover that this movement afforded Hermione, she gathered that Harry was once again the main object of wizarding gossip.

"Good morning, Miss Granger," Lucy replied, looking a little sheepish. Hermione smiled easily at her and the girl looked reassured that she wasn't in trouble. "Should I get you your usual cup of coffee?"

"Actually, I think I'll do without for now, thanks." Hermione had a feeling that she wouldn't be needing her customary shot of caffeine to get her through this morning. After all, she had something much more invigorating – a plan. She smiled again and practically skipped into her office, followed by the quizzical eyes of her secretary.

She threw herself into her research about Goblin Welfare with even more gusto than usual, her eyes moving so fast across the dusty, frail pages of the heavy books that they seemed to blur. Instead of writing up her notes by hand as she usually did (because using a Quick Quotes Quill still felt like cheating, although it would no longer result in an immediate detention from an irate Professor McGonagall), she simply dictated all of her findings and her red quill scribbled away furiously.

Most of the texts were in ancient runes, a language which seemed to be common to all the magical brethren. That said, some species were more fluent in runes than others – the goblins made endless mistakes, so Hermione's job was made all the harder. However, she, unlike the goblin scribes, was extremely proficient at Ancient Runes. This was thanks in part to the competency of Professor Babbling and thanks to the one mistake Hermione had ever made in an exam; ever since she had confused Ehwaz and Eihwaz, she made sure to check and double-check every word of her translations.

_It's no wonder I never see anyone anymore,_ she thought to herself as she flicked through her well-thumbed rune dictionary, checking for the third time that she had correctly translated _branijanna_ in one of the goblins' more gruesomely detailed accounts of war.

She'd never fully appreciated just how much time she wasted writing everything up herself until she slammed the last dry tome shut (causing a flurry of dust to swirl into her face and make her sneeze) and the red quill dropped lifeless beside the reams of parchment. Hermione yawned and clicked her back, which was beginning to ache from having to lean so close to the books that her nose skimmed the pages. Her eyes were dry, a result of not blinking for extremely long periods of time as she attempted to read the indecipherable scrawls of people long dead.

Her preliminary research done for what was doubtless going to be another extensive, novel-length report that few people would ever bother to read, except maybe a _really_ dedicated fan of the 'Golden Trio', she turned her attention to the growing pile of papers in her IN tray. At the top, in a horrible shade of pink, was Marcia Cross' latest report – a sure-fire way to put Hermione in a bad mood.

Today's report was no exception: thirty pages of ill-researched, incoherent ramble against the new House Elf Rights Bill Hermione had so desperately been trying to pass written on baby pink, scented paper. Scented. Hermione shook her head in disgust; the only reason Marcia was still working for Hermione's department was that her uncle was very well connected within the ministry, and it seemed that no other department would take her. It wasn't hard to guess why.

Marcia, it seemed, was trying to press the idea that house elves would not be able to fend for themselves 'in the wild' due to their comparatively smaller brains, and so it would be a cruelty to release them from 'a comfortable life of domesticity'. Hermione grimaced, remembering all too well the beheaded house elves that were displayed like trophies at 12 Grimauld Place. _Comfortable indeed._ She began scribbling corrections on the report in red ink, taking no little pleasure in crossing through large sections of the atrocious text. On several occasions, she wrote THIS IS COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY STUPID! in the margins. It seemed a little harsh, but Hermione chose to leave it. The girl was thick-skinned – after all, she'd faced massive humiliation when her report linking the length of Goblins' noses to their hoarding natures (which had been published without Hermione's approval and contained no less than 57 spelling mistakes) had nearly caused a riot at Gringott's. Besides, the plan that was ever bubbling away at the back of Hermione's mind was making her a little reckless, more devil-may-care than she had been in a long time.

Working in a department which was regarded as a joke by a vast proportion of the wizarding community had taken its toll on Hermione. She'd created the department from scratch, working hard to provide it with credibility. Horace Slughorn had been undeniably useful in helping her drag the department to the heights which it had attained, doing the majority of her networking for her. She was introduced to countless ex-Slug Club members such as Gwenog Jones, whose open support of her work slowly began turning public opinion in her favour. It helped, she wryly admitted to herself from time to time, that she was rather famous herself. However, all of this meant that she was even more stringent when it came to rules. She couldn't let anything, even the tiniest of slip-ups, destroy what she had worked so hard to build.

_Maybe that's why you've never made any friends here, or why you're never invited to the office Christmas parties – who wants their bitch of a boss there to ruin all the fun?_ the little voice in her head taunted her mercilessly just as she was about to write another acrid comment on Marcia Cross' pink report. Her arm paused, nib hovering just over the paper. She dropped the quill with a clatter as if revolted.

Infuriatingly, a part of her had to acknowledge that the stupid voice in her head was probably right. Without Harry and Ron's laid-back attitudes, Hermione had become increasingly like the girl she'd been in first year. And last time it took a near-death experience at the hands of a troll to make friends. As the possibilities of history repeating itself on that account seemed slim, Hermione had no choice but to assume she would die alone surrounded by cats.

_Oh ho, but you won't be alone, you'll be married to some pimply pureblood heir, _the little voice chortled. Hermione would have hit the source of the snarky remarks, had it not been her own head. But, once again, the voice had a point. She would much rather die alone in a smelly apartment filled with cats than married to some pompous idiot who thought she was nothing more than another object that his money could buy him. She couldn't waste any more precious time correcting the rubbish Marcia had vomited all over paper.

"Lucy, could you come in here for a second?" she called, forgetting (as usual) to use the intercom system that had been specially set up.

Lucy poked her head around the door almost immediately and Hermione waved the pink folder at her.

"Take this back to Marcia Cross and remind her that the purpose of this department is to campaign to increase magical rights, not to remove them altogether." Lucy nodded and scribbled down Hermione's words on a post-it with a solemn expression. Hermione smiled, pleased at how seriously her young secretary took her job.

"Is there anything else?" Lucy asked, shifting the file to her hip to free up a hand in case Hermione asked her to carry something else.

"That's all for now." Lucy turned to go and had just reached the door when a thought struck Hermione.

"Actually," she said, "there is one thing. But shut the door first." Lucy looked at her boss, confusion evident upon her face, but did as she was told. The door clicked firmly into place and Hermione cast a silent _Muffliato_ spell as extra precaution. This was one conversation she couldn't risk being overheard.

"What I'm about to say to you cannot _ever_ be repeated outside of these four walls because the consequences could be disastrous. I could be put in Azkaban. Or worse, I could lose the department. Do you understand?" Lucy nodded, looking suddenly afraid. Perhaps Hermione was being a little too dramatic. "Don't worry," she said, backtracking a bit, "it seems unlikely they'd take away the department."

"What's going on, Miss Granger? Are you in some kind of trouble? Are the goblins blackmailing you again? Because Mr Shacklebolt said that –"

"No, no, it's nothing like that at all," Hermione said, laughing. She'd definitely been too dramatic – the poor girl was terrified now. "And it's probably best if we don't get Mr Shacklebolt involved at all, alright?"

Lucy nodded her assent, visibly relieved. After all, she had been the one to open the parcel containing a few particularly foul dungbombs, several of which appeared rather home-made. Hermione doubted the girl had ever quite forgiven the goblins for that present.

"As you know, I've received quite a few proposals of marriage lately –"

"Ooh, I know, you've got the most offers in the ministry so far, and the most eligible bachelors!" Lucy squealed excitedly, failing to notice Hermione's expression of distaste.

"Quite. Anyway, the law states that I have to pick one of these _eligible bachelors_ to be my husband. The problem is I want to marry for love and not for convenience – I don't want to spend the rest of my life with someone I barely know because the law says I have to. I want to find the one person I can't live without, someone who makes my heart dance in my chest every time he catches my eye, who takes the light out of the world when he leaves the room. I want someone to sweep me off my feet and ride off into the sunset with me. I want someone who loves me as much as I love him, who wants to be with me because of who I am, not because I'd make the perfect shiny trophy for him to drag out in front of society. I don't want to be bought – at least not with money. I want a fair exchange: his heart for mine. "

Hermione tried to block out the 'aww' noises her secretary was making, but she was blushing furiously by the time she'd finished her little speech. She'd just bared her heart to someone who was practically a stranger, and she hoped she'd made the right decision. The way Lucy was looking at her, one hand over her heart, Hermione suddenly realised what it must feel like to be a puppy. She coughed awkwardly, wondering whether the girl was about to say something or whether her mouth was just gaping open at the romantic spiel that had just tripped off of Hermione's tongue.

"That is the most romantic thing I've ever heard," Lucy said after a moment of silence.

Hermione flashed her a quick smile. "I know, very out of character for me," she said sardonically. "Fluffiness aside, I need your help." Lucy was immediately alert, whipping out her little notepad. "I need you to help me research all of my potential _suitors._" This time the disgust in her voice was not lost on the younger girl, who looked at her sympathetically again. "I need you to find out everything you can about them – anything that I could use to turn them against me."

"Absolutely, yes, of course. Who should I start with? I know that there's a pretty big file on Draco Malfoy somewhere…"

"I appreciate your eagerness, but Malfoy's actually one of the ones I can do on my own. You don't need to research Ron either, by the way." _Although it's been so long since I last saw him, I probably don't know a single thing about him anymore._

Lucy was nodding at Hermione's every syllable now, so enthusiastic that she had actually started to bounce up and down a little bit.

"So once you have all of this information, what are you going to do? Blackmail them until they tell the judge they don't want to marry you?"

"Um…" Truth be told, Hermione wasn't exactly sure how she was going to go about convincing each one of her suitors that she was utterly unweddable. The blackmail idea had crossed her mind before, but she doubted she was going to be able to find something so scandalous about each of her potential suitors that they would immediately agree to leave her alone.

Lucy seemed to sense Hermione's uncertainty, as she kept prattling on happily. "Or, you could sell the secrets to _The Whirligig_ – Rita Skeeter would pay lots for that sort of dirt. And even if they still wouldn't withdraw their proposals, then you'd have enough money to bribe a judge."

"I don't think I need to do anything _that _illegal, Lucy," she said, laughing.

"Oh, okay." Lucy looked slightly put out that Hermione was, once again, being sensible. The girl had been watching too many dramas…

"Maybe we'll think of something once we know what we're dealing with," Hermione said, but the sense of elation that had bourn her through the morning's work seemed to be fast vanishing with the realisation that her plan was only half-formed. "Let's just start gathering information about them. Should we split the pile in half? It would probably be faster that way, and time is very much of the essence."

"You're here late every day already, Miss Granger. If you started cross-referencing files, you'd never go home," Lucy replied with a cheeky grin. "I'll have the reports on your desk by Monday."

"Remind me to give you a raise. And also, you don't have to keep calling me Miss Granger. It's Hermione."

"Yes Miss—Hermione," Lucy said, catching herself just as her tongue formed the words automatically.

"I should get back to work. Remember, no one can know about this. It's really important that this stays just between us - I'm not sure the Minister would appreciate it if he found out we were using Ministry stuff to sort out my love life..."

"Got it. I'll go deliver that file to Miss Cross now, then."

"That'd be great," Hermione said with a relieved smile as her secretary stepped out of the door once more. "And Lucy? Thanks again for doing this."

* * *

Hermione was sitting cross-legged on the floor of her office with her back pressed against one of the bookshelves that lined the walls. There were papers scattered all around her, forming a sort of protective ring. She was overworked and exhausted. Her nose was smudged with ink where she'd absent-mindedly scratched it with the nib of her quill and her hair was pulled up in a messy bun from which wisps of hair were continually struggling free.

She was working her way through a particularly tricky legislative document when the purple inter-departmental memo flitted into the room. She didn't notice it until it started tapping her persistently on the head. At first, still engrossed in her work, she swatted it away unconsciously. When it continued to prod her gently, she finally started to surface from her work-induced trance, grumbling.

"What do _you_ want?" she said, swiping at the blasted thing as it darted around. She tried to grab it again, but again it darted out of her reach and she closed her hand around thin air. _This is starting to get on my nerves,_ she thought. Probably someone's idea of a joke – someone who'd found out about her abysmal coordination, no doubt.

After several more minutes of trying and failing to catch the piece of paper, which seemed to be openly mocking her now, she finally remembered that she was a witch.

"Accio stupid memo!" she growled, jabbing her wand rather harder than was necessary in its general direction. It zoomed straight at her, and this time her hands closed around the paper. _If this is from Marcia Cross, I'm going to kill her_, Hermione thought violently as she wrenched the (still feebly flapping) paper open so that she could read the message inside.

As it turned out, it wasn't from Marcia at all. It was from the Auror Department.

_Hermione,_

_Can we talk? My office at 5?_

_Harry_

Despite both working in the same building, it had been a while since Harry and Hermione had spoken, mostly because Harry was off somewhere tropical tracking down a bad guy or Hermione was so buried in paperwork that she didn't sleep for days on end. The Order meetings were getting further and further apart as everyone tried to leave that fragment of their lives behind them. No one much felt like gathering at the new headquarters with so many holes where familiar faces should have been. It was Dumbledore's Order, and without Dumbledore it just wasn't the same.

As it was, receiving a note from Harry (although very short and infuriatingly difficult to actually receive) was a happy surprise. So happy, indeed, that it was difficult for Hermione to throw herself back into her work. She did, of course, scribble away furiously while the hands of the clock drew slowly closer to five, but she didn't quite manage the same level of concentration as previously.

Eventually, the clock read 4.55 and Hermione leapt to her feet, sending papers flying everywhere in her eagerness. She jumped from one clear spot of floor to another as though leaping on stepping stones in a river of paper until she reached the door, where she cast one slightly guilty look back at the work that she was abandoning so callously. On her way out, she caught Lucy's eye and winked conspiratorially. The girl returned the wink with a little wave, proof of how much the relationship had changed between the two of them since Hermione had shared her secret plan the previous day.

Hermione squeezed into the lift next to a tubby old man with a shining bald crown who was clutching a goldfish bowl containing what appeared to be a fire-breathing fish. The problem was, the fire was put out the minute the fish opened its mouth, so all that came out was bubbles of scalding-hot water.

"_Level Four, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures"_, the silvery voice of the elevator announced. The old man shot the offending goldfish a dirty look as he wrenched open the grille and disappeared, the glass bowl tucked under his arm rather unceremoniously.

Two witches were chattering loudly just behind Hermione's head.

"Horrible case, wasn't it? I've never seen anything like it."

"I know. As if getting his wand stuck up his…"

"I know! _I tripped_ – I mean really, does he think he fooled any of us?"

"Of all the spells to get confused with, that one was the worst."

"The whole place stank to high heaven, thank merlin they didn't make us stay behind to clear it up. I really pity the poor thing that got that job."

"I had to go home and change my robes – that smell's never going to come out now!"

"You think that's bad: I had to obliviate a couple of muggles who passed out just by walking by. They're going to wonder what they stepped in when they wake up."

Thankfully, Hermione didn't have to endure too much more of their rather disgusting conversation as they elbowed past her when the lift stopped on level three, still comparing horror stories. Several more people got off at level three, so it was just Hermione and two tall, silent men right at the back left as it lurched left and down again. The two men, although she didn't recognise them, clearly worked in the Department of Mysteries (which Hermione still felt guilty about destroying in her fifth year at Hogwarts). They gave off a very mysterious aura, and something about them made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. She was more than glad when the elevator clattered suddenly to a halt, causing her to stumble slightly.

"_Level Two, Department of Magical Law Enforcement"_ the voice announced smoothly, and Hermione tugged the grille open. She found herself in a large room filled with desks that were separated off from one another with shoulder-high glass partitions. People were scratching furiously away at rolls of parchment with battered quills and maps that had been punctured with little flashing pins lined the walls. There was a low buzz of conversation which came from several small knots of people who were hunched with bent heads over files. A few people poked their heads over their glass partitions as she crossed the room, but she didn't meet their eyes.

She headed straight across the wide expanse of the room for one of the narrower corridors that branched off from it, scanning the brass plaques for the one bearing Harry's name. She was thoroughly confused when she reached the end of the corridor without seeing the familiar letters. Hermione knew that she had an excellent memory so even though it had been a while since Harry had told her excitedly about getting his own office, she knew very well that he had said corridor 4B. She was standing in corridor 4B, but Harry's office was nowhere to be found.

Her brow furrowed as she retraced her steps back to the central room, feeling very foolish.

She approached a young woman whose long red nails were clicking on the keys of her typewriter. The woman didn't look when Hermione coughed quietly to attract her attention, but continued to punch the keys as though she hadn't heard. She had heard, though, because her shoulders tightened ever so slightly.

"Excuse me," Hermione said. It was as though she hadn't even spoken; the only sign that she'd actually made a sound was the narrowing of the woman's eyes until she was glaring at the typewriter through angry slits.

"Excuse me," Hermione said again, louder this time. She moved closer to the desk so that she was almost touching the other woman. This only caused her to double the speed of her typing, as though she was trying to drown out the source of irritation by making an extra-loud noise. Hermione was not to be deterred, adamant that this rude woman would be the one to answer her question despite the hundreds of other people in that room (people who were now beginning to observe the scene curiously).

Pretending to lean casually, Hermione placed her hand directly on top of the document that the other woman was copying up so that it entirely obscured the words. This, finally, earned her a reaction. The woman hit the period key so hard that Hermione was genuinely worried she might have broken a finger, and then she looked up.

"Can I help you, madam?" the woman said in a falsely sweet, chirpy voice, the effect of which was slightly ruined as it was coming through very clenched teeth.

"Why, yes, I believe you can," Hermione replied with a wide smile that did not disguise the glare she shot the woman. "I'm looking for Harry Potter's office."

"I couldn't possibly disclose that information to you, madam. You see, we get several women a day in here asking that same question and Mr Potter simply doesn't have time for signing autographs today." The woman smirked, convinced she had put Hermione in her place.

Hermione breathed deeply, trying to hold in her seething anger. She didn't reply for a long time, merely staring at her opponent as she tried to reign in her rage. Who did this bitch think she was, acting so high and mighty? Just because she was some sort of perfect ice queen who was working in the Aurors' department, did not mean that her job was somehow so important that she couldn't spare a few seconds to help someone. She was not above Hermione – she was only manning a typewriter, doing a job a monkey could probably do better, whereas Hermione was head of her department – she had no right to look down on her. No doubt Hermione's appearance left something to be desired (she was very conscious that she hadn't bought new clothes in a long time, and that her hair bore an uncanny resemblance to a bird's nest), but that's what came with having a difficult job: sacrifices had to be made. The only thing this woman seemed to have sacrificed was her comfort – those pointy stiletto heels were bound to be crushing her toes.

But as Hermione stared, she noticed that one line of eye-liner was thicker than the other, giving the woman a lightly lopsided appearance and that she had a birthmark that looked remarkably like a dirty thumbprint on one side of her neck. She noticed faint blue bags of tiredness under the woman's eyes, not quite concealed by heavy charmwork. There was a rip in her shirt which had been hurriedly sown up, and her shoes were scuffed in places. These flaws suddenly shattered the illusion that Hermione had created in her own mind. This woman wasn't some perfect female, or an opponent in a fight, she was just a woman who'd probably had a bad day. By the time Hermione opened her mouth to speak again, all her inexplicable anger had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

She sighed heavily and rubbed her eyes. "I'm sorry. My name's Hermione Granger – Harry's expecting me," she said, producing the crumpled memo that bore Harry's writing. The woman threw it a cursory glance, but her face had already softened at the change in Hermione's tone.

"Corridor 1A, third door on the left."

"Thank you. Sorry to have bothered you."

"It's no problem," the woman said, and threw Hermione the smallest of smiles before turning back to her work with a weary, bracing intake of breath.

Hermione found corridor 1A with no trouble (as it was easily the biggest off-shoot of the main room) and counted the doors until she stood outside the one with Harry's name on it.

_Harry Potter, Junior Head Auror_.

He hadn't told her about the promotion, she realised with a painful jolt. She remembered the days when she'd be the first to know every tiny detail of his life, from an unusually decent mark in Potions to the nightmares that used to torment him. She missed those days fiercely. She missed him.

_You're about to see him now, so stop missing him and get on with it_, she told herself. She knocked tentatively and an authoritative voice that was recognisably his answered immediately.

"Come in!"

She pushed the door open and smiled. Harry was sitting in an imposing black leather desk chair, one hand tangled in his unruly black hair. His green eyes brightened behind his wonky glasses when he saw who had just walked in to his office.

"Hermione!" he cried, springing up and tripping over various objects that littered his floor in his happiness. He pulled her to him and enveloped her in a brotherly hug which she returned with equal force. His familiar smell enveloped her and she snuggled into his warm embrace. They broke apart, smiling fondly at one another, and he cleared a space in one of the armchairs in the corner of the room for her by shoving some files onto the floor.

"Well, 'mione, what d'you think of the place?" he said with a self-conscious grin and a little sweeping gesture. Although he was acting casually, Hermione could sense that he really needed her praise and she complied easily. After all, it was quite impressive. One wall was entirely made of glass, looking out on a lovely (but fake) bird's eye view of London. The other walls were plastered with papers, but the occasional bald patch indicated that underneath they had been painted a fiery Gryffindor red. She smiled softly at his house loyalty. The few shelves were not used to house books but carried various Dark Detectors that were oddly reminiscent of those Moody used to swear by. She was pleased to see that pride of place had been given to a long-stilled golden snitch, the same one he'd caught in his mouth at his first Quidditch match, the one in which Dumbledore had concealed the last of the deathly hallows. It was a bittersweet reminder of their shared past, and Hermione found it difficult to drag her eyes away from it.

"It's great Harry, really. But why didn't you tell me you'd been promoted?"

He looked sheepishly at her, trying to gauge whether she was angry at his rather huge oversight. It was a look she remembered well from all the occasions he had sacrificed his homework to practice Quidditch to her endless disapproval. He squirmed a little under her gaze.

"I'm sorry, 'mione. It's been so busy you wouldn't believe…" Harry trailed off and slumped against the back of his chair. For the first time, she noticed how tired he looked. There were a few more small scars on the backs of his hands too, standing out starkly against his skin (but none as white as the words _I must not tell lies_).

"Actually, I know exactly what you mean. I've had so much work lately that I don't leave before 11 o'clock in the evening. And that's on a good night."

"Oh come off it, Hermione. You and I both know that you'd sleep here if they'd let you. In fact, I distinctly remember hearing about the nest one of the cleaners found in your office. Kreacher would be so proud," he said with a teasing grin.

"Har har. How is Kreacher, by the way? The last time I saw him, he followed me around so that I wouldn't leave any traces of my 'dirty blood' over his precious things."

"Oh, same old ray of sunshine. Dung taught him some new words, too, so he's got a whole new repertoire of colourful insults. I think he's losing it a bit, though – the other week I caught him putting up a picture of Sirius next to Regalus' locket, and he hated Sirius."

"Maybe it's time you set him free," Hermione said sternly.

"Hermione, he doesn't want to be set free. He wants to retire like the rest of his family, head mounted on the staircase, and I don't want to be to break it to him that we aren't going to behead him. He'll probably try to do it himself and end up like Nearly Headless Nick."

"Still, you should talk to him about taking a holiday or something –"

"Look, can we talk about something else now?" he snapped at her. She blinked in surprise at the sudden change of tone, but hastily controlled her expression.

"Sure. What did you want to talk to me about? Your message was very… cryptic."

Harry grinned again, the irritation and tension clearing from his face almost immediately. "How long did it take you to catch it?"

So he _had_ charmed it to taunt her. _Stupid git_.

"Long enough," she grumbled. He chuckled and looked thoroughly pleased with himself and to her annoyance she felt a smile creep across her lips. "Very funny, Harry."

"I thought so too."

"So did you drag me all the way here just to rub my lack of coordination in my face? Because if you did, so help me –"

"Nah, there was something else…" He looked uneasy again, and ran a hand through his hair. Hermione couldn't help but notice that he was not meeting her eye, staring instead at his shoes. Something wasn't right.

"Harry? What's going on?" Various scenarios of an increasingly horrible nature began chasing each other through her head. So focused was she on her doomsday predictions (of which Trelawny would have been proud) that she nearly missed his quiet words.

"Ginny left me." The four syllables seemed to drain the very air from him and he appeared to deflate before her eyes. Her shock gave way to incomprehension, which was swiftly followed by anger as she took in her best friend's current appearance.

"Why?" was all she could manage to say after the silence between them had dragged on for a lifetime.

He shrugged, his features carved with self-loathing. "She said she couldn't stand it anymore, all the _fame_." He said the word with a powerful hatred that disfigured his face and transformed it into something she couldn't quite recognise as Harry anymore. "I think the final straw was when I got promoted above her; she seemed to think that they were promoting 'Harry Potter the Chosen One' as opposed to 'Harry Potter the auror'. Maybe she resented the fact that she wasn't promoted too, or the fact that we never really spent much time together anymore, or the bloody cameras that still follow me around everywhere I go. Anyway, long story short, she quit her job and left me."

Hermione reached out and grasped his hand firmly in hers. It wasn't enough to wipe the look off of his face, but she tried to pour every ounce of comfort that she possessed into the futile gesture. He smiled at her, but it was an empty smile that didn't reach his eyes and she could tell that it was meant to reassure her.

"I guess I should have seen it coming. The press has always had a knack for making me miserable… But I thought she was the one, you know?"

She nodded. Not looking at her, he continued as though thinking out loud. "I was going to ask her to marry me. Not right away – in a couple of years when the timing was right, when everything had settled down. I hid the ring in that pair of socks that Dobby gave me, remember? But then I woke up one day and all her things were packed. At first, I thought she was going away on another job abroad – she'd been chasing Yaxley and there were reports that he was in Italy somewhere – but then I started to notice all the other things. Big gaping holes in my life were appearing in every room. I started calling her name, thinking for a horrible moment that she'd gone without even saying goodbye or anything. Then I got to the living room and she was just sitting there on a suitcase, waiting. Said something about how too many people had left my life without saying goodbye, which would have been touching had it been for the fact that she was saying she was as good as dead to me. And then she vanished."

"But surely you see her at work all the time?" Hermione said, in a voice as quiet as Harry's.

"I thought I would, and I wasn't sure whether to be happy or sad about that. I asked around, though, when I didn't see her. Turns out she'd quit already, which means she'd been planning to leave for more than two weeks. That hurt – that I could have been so blind and deluded to think that everything was going well, that I'd end up marrying the girl of my dreams. But that would never happen to me, how could I forget? Everything I've loved, everyone, has left me sooner or later." His voice was rising in anger, an anger which he turned inwards against himself.

Hermione felt a pang of sadness, but also the tiniest spark of irritation. "Not everyone has abandoned you, Harry…"

"Oh really?" he bit back. "Name one person who hasn't."

"Me," she said. The syllable that was barely more than a whisper seemed to have the same effect as if she'd screamed at him. Neither of them said anything for a long time. Harry stared at the floor and Hermione stared at him and waited for him to break the silence that was growing between them. When he did, it was not with words but with a smile – the first genuine smile that she'd received from him, his eyes free from any clouds of bitterness.

"I'm really sorry, but I have to go," Hermione said, catching sight of the clock. "But any time you want to talk, any time at all, you know where to find me."

"Yeah, at your desk," he replied in a teasing tone.

"Day or night, rain or shine," she smiled.

* * *

Hermione chose to walk home again that evening, to give herself time to process Harry's news alone in the fresh air. She was so deep in thought that she didn't notice where her feet were taking her until she collided with something solid.

"_Oof,_" she exhaled as the force of the impact knocked the air out of her lungs. She staggered backwards, arms flailing to attempt to recover some semblance of balance. Her attempt was unsuccessful, and she hit the ground hard. The force of the fall had caused tears to spring up, blurring the edges of the world a little. She peered up at the object with which she had collided, trying to make out more than just smudges of colour, then a firm hand encircled one of her arms and pulled her back to her feet.

"You just couldn't stay away, could you Granger?" The familiar drawl (which she'd very much hoped never to hear again) made her head snap up immediately and her cheeks to ignite. The tears that had been threatening to spill over her cheeks disappeared immediately, evaporated by the fire that was now burning all over her face.

_Of all the _things_ to bump into, you have to walk straight into Malfoy?_

She cursed colourfully in her head, but plastered a mocking grimace on her face and met his eyes unblinkingly.

"Oh, I didn't see you there. I guess I was a little busy thinking about that time I hit you, and how much I'd love to do it again," she simpered sardonically, her mortification at making a fool of herself firing up her dormant anger.

"You were thinking about me? How delightfully adorable of you, _darling_," he replied, in a voice that was thick with sarcasm. Her comment about hitting him had caused the tiniest flame of heat to blaze across his cheekbones, somehow melting the silver in his eyes. _Stop noticing his face_, she reprimanded herself sternly.

"I had hoped you'd always stay a distant memory that I could repress, but unfortunately I see you've retained your capacity to disappoint," she snapped.

"And you, magically, haven't changed a bit either. Look, still got that uncanny resemblance to a bird's nest that you call hair – I remember the day I turned it blue. Good times..." he said, staring off into the distance as though fondly remembering happier days.

Hermione flushed at the comment about her hair, a hand reaching up unconsciously to tuck one of the many escaping straggles behind her ear. She watched his eyes follow the movement, thinking desperately of a snappy come-back but distracted by the memories that were resurfacing of their shared childhood. The day in question, which occurred sometime during fourth year, was one of the least unpleasant. Admittedly, she'd had to walk around for several hours with sky blue hair until she'd looked up the counter-charm, but the prank had drawn much more forced laughs from his Slytherin cronies than usual. Pansy Parkinson, who was usually the source of the loudest and shrillest laughter at Malfoy's antics, had been unusually silent. She'd even looked rather peeved as Malfoy admired his handiwork.

Before she could recall much more of the incident, Malfoy spoke again and brought her back to the present with an uncomfortable jerk like the one that a Portkey inflicted.

"Lovely as it is to reminisce with you, Granger, I have more important matters to attend to."

"You? Important? Don't make me laugh, Malfoy."

"I wouldn't dream of it, and I pity the poor unsuspecting innocent who does inadvertently produce that torturous noise from you."

Hermione opened her mouth to retort that her laugh had been greatly inspired by his scream of terror during his near-death experience with Buckbeak but before she could so much as utter a syllable, he had turned sharply on his heel and was striding away. She watched him leave, irritated that she'd allowed him to have the last word in their verbal duel (although attempting to comfort herself with the fact that he'd walked away, which was technically cheating).

As she watched, he turned and called back over his shoulder, "Oh, and permit me to offer you some humble advice…. Invest in some glasses!"

She let out a little growl of frustration as he turned the corner and left her well and truly outplayed.

_Advantage Malfoy_, she thought bitterly.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"This is the last of it," Lucy said as she dumped another pile of bursting files on top of the already teetering mountain that obscured Hermione almost entirely from view.

The girl certainly had been thorough. She'd taken her secret assignment far more seriously than she'd taken any job Hermione had given her before, perhaps because of the thrill of it being slightly illegal or perhaps because it involved Hermione's love life. And so it was that Hermione found herself faced with every detail that could possibly be known about each of her potential suitors, ordered in levels of increasing difficulty to get rid of. She stared at the papers, unmoving and more than a little daunted by the prospect as Lucy settled herself on a chair facing Hermione's desk, looking for all the world like a child at Christmas.

"I guess I'd better make a start," Hermione said reluctantly, reaching a hand for the file closest to her.

_NICOMEDO (NIC) HALL_ had been written in bold across the front of the manila cover. Hermione stared at the letters which, at the moment, held no significance for her. The moment she turned over the page, that random assortment of letters would shift in her mind until it represented a face and it would no longer be anonymous. She took a deep breath and opened the file.

The first thing that greeted her was the standard Ministry profile complete with awkward picture and very much in the style of a muggle dating profile. Nic had chosen to pose in his beater's uniform, holding his bat. Tucked under his arm was a bludger that was clearly struggling to wriggle free, and the strain of holding it in a seemingly nonchalant position made him look rather constipated. It didn't help that he was puffing out his chest at the same time, which gave his face a red hue. Just looking at the picture alone gave her a large indication of his personality, something which she felt was worth writing down.

She cleared her throat and Lucy, who had been watching her attentively, whipped out a quill and parchment.

"Nic Hall," she dictated, "is arrogant. Clearly very proud of Quidditch skill, plays for –" She broke off to scan the profile quickly (which she noticed was full of references to his Quidditch playing) before resuming the dictation, "Redhill Rovers."

Lucy snorted derisively as she wrote, and the noise did not escape Hermione.

"Is that not a good team?" she asked, in unfeigned ignorance. Hermione was the first to admit that Quidditch was one area in which she did not excel, nor did she care to. Therefore, she had no idea whether the Redhill Rovers was a good team or not – although if she'd been going by the dating profile alone she would have assumed it was top of the league because of the way Nic spoke of it in reverential tones.

"No," Lucy scoffed, "they played so badly even the Chuddley Cannons beat them 190-10. They haven't made it into the league in about ten years, and I've never even heard of this Hall guy – bet he's a reserve."

"Um, okay, thanks for that. I guess you'd better write down 'mention Viktor', then." Lucy quirked an eyebrow quizzically and Hermione sighed internally. Lucy seemed like a rather dedicated Quidditch fan, someone who would have an extremely loud and extremely tedious reaction to the fact that Hermione had once dated the famous Quidditch player, Viktor Krum, who was now the youngest captain of a team in history.

"Well, years and years ago, I sort of dated Viktor Krum…" As predicted, Lucy stopped writing entirely, frozen in position as though waiting for Hermoine to deny it and to laugh it off as a silly joke.

When Hermione said nothing, Lucy's eyes widened. "Nooo, you? YOU? VIKTOR KRUM?" she said, eyebrows comically arched in shock. Hermione tried to ignore the somewhat unflattering disbelief that was evident in her secretary's face.

"Yes, but as I said, it was years ago. I mean, I was in fourth year and he was only there for the triwizard tournament, so it didn't exactly go far. He was my first kiss-" Hermione ignored the second sharp intake of breath and barrelled on with her story, "and we've somewhat kept in touch since. Birthdays, Christmas, that sort of thing. I just thought it might be worth mentioning, since this man clearly prides himself on his Quidditch."

Lucy was doing a great impression of a bobbly head toy like the one Hermione's parents used to have in their car as she stared at Hermione, clearly too astounded by the bombshell that had just been dropped on her to do anything productive for a while. Hermione settled herself against the back of her chair in preparation for the inevitable barrage of questions that was sure to follow such a surprising revelation. Try as she might, she couldn't help but feel a little hurt that the reaction to this news was always the same. There was always long-lasting disbelief, as though it was so impossible that someone who looked like her could ever have had any kind of a relationship with someone like Viktor. Telling that story tore open an old wound which had never really healed properly: a hatred of her appearance born from the many taunts and insults that she had received over the years. After all she had achieved in her career, she was frustrated to be reminded how easily those feelings of worthlessness could be brought flooding back.

She peered around the tower of files at Lucy who, despite her cross-legged pose, still looked immaculate. Her short blonde hair hung perfectly straight without a hair out of place so that it framed her face and highlighted her cheekbones. It was so shiny that Hermione wondered briefly if Lucy might have Veela blood, but then reminded herself that there were spells and potions that she'd never bothered to look up which could have such an effect on hair. She wore a muggle suit (since they did not have any formal departmental gatherings scheduled, the official departmental robes had been left at home): a light grey blazer over a dress of the same colour which fit her perfectly and was utterly spotless, and black satin shoes with a heel and a small bow over the toe. Her makeup was lightly and tastefully done so that it was not overpowering, unlike some witches that Hermione crossed in the hallway, but so that it enhanced her natural features. And although she'd been writing down Hermione's every word since they'd begun, she didn't have a single spot of ink on her hands. Hermione was loath to look down at her own hands, which she knew very well would be stained almost entirely black by now.

It was almost a relief when Lucy started questioning Hermione on every little detail about her relationship with Viktor, because it meant that Hermione was snapped out of her spiral of self-depreciation.

"Does he always look grumpy, even when he's with you?" Lucy giggled. Hermione joined in good-naturedly. After all, she'd thought the same thing when she'd first seen Viktor in the library.

"At first, I thought he was permanently angry, but when he was alone around me he really softened up. He's completely different when he's away from all of those annoying fan girls – d'you know, someone asked him to sign their forehead with lipstick? I think it's completely ridiculous, and he agrees with me."

"How did you two even meet?" Lucy asked eagerly. She seemed to realise that her tone of voice had been slightly rude, so she added quickly, "Because, you know, you don't like Quidditch and you said you weren't a fan girl…"

"He came over with his school for the triwizard tournament in my fourth year at Hogwarts, just after I'd seen him play at the Quidditch World Cup so I knew roughly who he was – Ron wouldn't shut up about him, he was worse than the fan girls. Anyway, I spent most of my time in the library and so did he, except that he'd always inadvertently bring a crowd of loud girls with him. It was really distracting, especially since he used to sit a couple of tables away from me so I could hear them all swooning over him. After a while, he finally managed to come into the library on his own (probably because it was really late and all his followers were in bed) and he told me that he'd been coming here because he'd been trying to get up the courage to ask me to the Yule Ball."

"Aww!" Lucy cooed in delight, sounding a lot like the fan girls that Hermione had just been describing. "Did you dance together at the ball?"

"Well, he was one of the champions, so we had to dance together. He's not exactly very graceful though, kept treading on my toes and apologising every time he did."

"I can imagine, the way he walks out onto the pitch – he looks really duck-footed and awkward until he gets on a broom. Then he's beautiful," she sighed.

The conversation carried on in much the same vein with Lucy asking question after question and then making noises of adoration at each of Hermione's answers. She didn't doubt, by the time they got back to the matter at hand, that Viktor Krum had just gained himself an extremely dedicated fan.

"So what are you going to do about Nic Hall, then?" Lucy said, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes as Hermione finished regaling her with another tale of her time with Krum.

"Well, from what I can see here, he's the kind of man who likes to be the centre of attention. He's one of those people who thinks of himself as charismatic, like it's some sort of special honour that he's gracing you with his presence. Obviously, he thinks that being a professional Quidditch player, and descended from a relatively rich family –"

"Actually, there's an article in there somewhere about how he gambled all of his family's money away. Quite a scandal when they repossessed his mansion, apparently," Lucy interrupted.

"Good, good, write that down, I'm sure we can use that somehow."

Lucy scribbled away furiously, and Hermione noted with satisfaction that she'd nearly filled an entire side. However, despite all of these notes, they were still no closer to having formulated a concrete plan of action. How were they going to convince Nicomedo Hall to withdraw his proposal and, if possible, become one of her character references?

_Think, Hermione, think. They didn't call you the brains of the Golden Trio for nothing…_

Then again, she reminded herself, relationships had never been her forte. Mostly because her first kiss was with Krum when she was young and already more than a little infatuated with Ron. Her second kiss, with Ron, had been adrenaline-fueled and had left her rather empty. And that was it. Those two boys were the grand sum of her entire experience of the relationship world, and it was pathetic. Hermione, who had mastered some of the most complex magic of the wizarding world well before her time, was miserably poor at relationships and found that she was going to have to defer to someone with a greater understanding of this alien world. For once, the know-it-all didn't have the answers.

"Er, have you got any ideas, Lucy?" she asked, a little awkwardly. The girl beamed at her, a smile that clearly said _I thought you'd never ask!_, and words immediately began tripping from her mouth.

"Well, Hall's clearly arrogant. And if you look at the witches he's dated in the past, none of them are that pretty. Well, pretty enough that they aren't an embarrassment to be seen with, but also not so attractive that they don't eclipse his (very average) looks. I remember reading something about experimental muscle sculpting spells being used, so I think he must have had a bit of semi-legal work done…"

Hermione began to get the sensation that Lucy was talking more to herself than to Hermione, a sensation which was enhanced when Lucy suddenly smacked her forehead.

"Oh!" she said, in a tone of realisation. "Okay, I think I've got it."

Hermione waited for Lucy to continue, excitement building, but the girl just looked at her warily.

"Well?" Hermione asked, feeling the silence between them had gone on for long enough. "What is it?"

"Promise you won't get mad," Lucy replied guardedly.

"I promise." Hermione was starting to get a little worried about the nature of Lucy's genius plan. The girl was regarding her so cagily, and with something of a critical eye, that it took all of Hermione's self-control not to squirm under her gaze.

"Well," she began tentatively, "this is what I thought you could do…"

Hermione wriggled around a little on the bar stool, trying (and failing) to find a more comfortable position on the stained and unhealthy-looking red velvet. She crossed her legs, looking around her and noting with an amalgamation of discomfort and pride that the simple movement earned her a few appreciative looks from the various species of men dotted around the less-than-sanitary bar.

She could see why Nic Hall had chosen this place for their rendezvous: it would be easy for the dim star such to shine in this dingy environment. He would be the centre of attention here, and no doubt that would have been enough to impress his previous conquests. Not Hermione, however. She knew his game very well, having studied his folder for hours with Lucy before writing to him to suggest that they go on a sort of 'get to know you' date, so it was unlikely his usual tricks would work on her.

Besides, he was late, and if there was one thing that Hermione admonished most frequently, it was unpunctuality.

All in all, not the greatest start to a date. And the man hadn't even arrived yet.

She sighed and ran a weary hand through her hair, where it met with none of its usual resistance. The feeling was still odd, although she'd been repeating the gesture non-stop since Lucy had taken her to the hairdresser's that morning. Instead of the thick tangle of ringlets that she was used to, the hairdresser had somehow managed to tease her hair into obedience, swearing profusely under her breath the entire time. By the time she'd left the salon, the hairdresser was red in the face and her wand was lightly smoking. Hermione's hair, however, was perfect.

Her big doe eyes now peeped out from underneath a fringe, which served to make them look startlingly large, like deep brown pools someone as shallow as Hall could easily get lost in. Her hair was layered lightly, and framed her face in loose, shiny waves as it tumbled past her shoulders to her mid back. Hermione tossed her hair over her shoulder experimentally, exposing her long white neck and the delicate hollow of her collarbone, and she felt a very un-Hermione giggle bubble in her throat as one man leaned so far towards her that he fell off of his chair entirely.

_This is going to be fun_, she thought gleefully.

The burly bartender interrupted her playful experiments with the males in the bar (all of whom were inching closer to her with varying degrees of subtlety) by sliding a glass towards her.

"From that guy there," he said, gruffly gesturing at a wizard who looked to be about three times her age. He gave her a coy wave as she caught his eye, and it took all of her self-control not to leave the bar at that moment, marriage law be damned.

Instead, she turned her attention to the drink in front her. It was a cocktail glass, replete with miniature pink flamingo stirrer. She made to grab the stirrer and it gave an indignant squawk and ruffled its feathers, wading through her drink to the other side of the glass. Of course, she'd half-forgotten it was a wizarding bar. Hermione looked around to see if anyone had noticed her faux-pas, but the other occupants of the bar had their eyes trained on areas of her body that were further south than her lightly blushing face.

She took a hesitant sip of the liquid that was pooled at the bottom of the glass, which was as vividly pink as the indignant flamingo who was now attempting to clamber out of her glass. It was cloyingly sweet, a bizarre mixture of candyfloss, cherries, strawberries and raspberries as though someone had blended together every pink item of food they could lay their hands on. Underneath the overpoweringly sugary tones, she tasted a hint of something far more dangerous. Its burn, worse than firewhiskey, had almost entirely been neutralised by the sweetness but it left an unmistakeably bitter taste on her tongue.

Hermione pushed the drink away, grimacing. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the face of her old admirer fall. She glanced at her watch again, fighting down irritation. Of course, it was to be expected from someone so arrogant as Nic Hall; he believed the world revolved around him, and thus he was not bound by mere human laws of time and respectability.

The barman pushed another drink towards her, gesturing this time at a sallow-faced wizard with a long nose and small, shifty eyes. By her best guess, he was around her age, but she didn't recognise him from Hogwarts. He leered at her in a way that made her skin crawl unpleasantly when he saw that she'd received her drink. The liquid in the glass was an alluringly deep red that caught the candlelight and shattered it so that it seemed to shine like a gem. She leaned forward, intrigued by the display of dancing lights within the glass but as she brought her nose closer to the liquid, she froze. Wafting from the shimmering surface in spirals was the faintest trace of freshly cut grass, new parchment and… something different. She no longer smelled the familiar scent of Ron's hair, a scent which she had always found pleasant and comfortable. Instead, there was a new scent – something familiar but frustratingly out of reach. She bent her head closer to the glass, her hair falling like a curtain to obscure her face, desperately trying to rack her memories for that scent. It lay frustratingly beneath the surface of obscurity.

Her nose skimmed the liquid and she leapt back at the cold, wet sensation. She'd let herself get drawn in by the irresistible smell of the drink, but the small shock was enough to clear her head of the sluggish, mesmerising fumes. She recognised easily that the drink had been laced with amortentia, a powerful love potion that her old potions teacher had once described as the most dangerous potion in his dungeon classroom.

Hermione was chastising herself for allowing her senses to be lulled by the dangerous siren song of the potion when her date for the evening burst through the door.

The first thing she noted was that he certainly liked to make an entrance.

The door to the bar slammed against the wall with the force of its opening causing heads to turn and one unfortunate witch to jump with fright and spill her butterbeer all over herself. The witch glared at the stranger as she cleaned up her robes, and Hermione couldn't blame her in the slightest. Nic Hall was wearing his quidditch uniform, the same one he'd been sporting in the photo he'd submitted for the Ministry profile. Even from a distance Hermione could tell that the mud that spattered his robes and his face had been artfully added and was not actually the product of a real match. No doubt he'd been sitting on his (rather large) posterior hoping that one of his fellow teammates would injure themselves so badly the captain would be forced to use him.

He scanned the room as the door swung shut behind him, one hand placed on his hip in a studied posture of masculinity, searching for Hermione. It was testament to how well Lucy had cleaned her up that it took him a long time to recognise her, although his eyes were immediately drawn towards her. Shock flooded his face and his eyebrows disappeared into his meticulously combed hair. His paunch, which he'd obviously been painstakingly sucking in, flopped out a little. Hermione scooped her purse from the bar, using the moment facing away from him to transfigure the smirk on her lips into something a little more sultry. He'd begun walking towards her, but before he'd even crossed the room she'd leapt lightly off of her barstool and landed gracefully despite her heels.

She sauntered across the room, resisting the urge to look down at her feet and keeping her eyes fixed on Hall's face. She felt her cheeks burn as heads turned and as Hall ran his eyes up and down her body in an unpleasant fashion, but she hoped he'd be too distracted to notice her discomfort.

She certainly was a distracting sight.

Hermione reached her target and lightly pressed herself against him to kiss his cheek in the continental manner. It was not something she felt comfortable doing, but Lucy had assured her that it would utterly throw him – he seemed to be used to being the one who was in control, and this simple gesture would give her the upper hand.

His mouth gaped, fish-like, as he searched his memory for his usual opening line and drew a blank. Hermione felt rather smug at his expression: he looked as though he'd been hit by a strong confundus charm.

"Wh-…. Uh…. Er…" he garbled nonsensically as Hermione flashed him a small smile. He seemed to regain some of his previous brain function. Or enough, at least, to form the words to his well-rehearsed line, "Sorry I'm late, love, but that's what you get for going on a date with a famous Quidditch player. The game just has to come first." These words were accompanied by an overly-dramatic sigh and a self-depreciating grimace which seemed utterly out of place on Hall's face.

His nasal tone of voice made Hermione's skin crawl with disgust, and her jaw clenched infinitesimally. Instead of replying caustically, as she would normally do, she stuck to the plan the two girls had created earlier that week.

"Oh, but when I dated Viktor – Viktor Krum, you know – he always put me first. I'll never forget what he said to me…" Here, Hermione looked past Hall's head with misty eyes and spoke in a very accurate impression of Viktor. "Oh, Hermy-own-ninny, you are like Golden Snitch. Ven I caught you, I von the match."

Hall's jaw dropped for the second time that night, giving him a gormless expression similar to that of Crabbe and Goyle. Before he could rack his brains for any reply to Hermione's news, she gripped his arm and steered him out of the dingy little pub. Hermione filled her lungs with the crisp night air, a cool breeze playing with her hair. When she turned to face him again, her lips were curved in a gentle smile that was, for the first time that night, genuine. He returned it in full and although his answering grin was dripping with self-assurance and arrogance, she thought she caught a glimpse of genuine friendliness underneath the thick veneer of cockiness. Somewhere under all the showiness was a man that a woman other than her might actually fall for.

Having realised that the man in front of her was more than just a picture and a few words on paper, she felt a little sorry about what she had plotted against him that night.

That didn't stop her from following the plan to a letter, however. She led him further away from the dilapidated building that housed his favourite watering hole, down the street until she reached a little deserted park. It was slightly eerie in the moonlight; deserted swings moved gently in the breeze. She leaned against the trunk of a tree, knowing that even in the dim evening light this position would highlight her curves to their full advantage.

"So, er, why did you bring me out here, eh?" he asked, with a wink that showed he'd completely misunderstood her intentions. It seemed he thought she'd taken one look at him and wanted to jump his bones.

She allowed her natural smile to curl into a grimace of disgust. "Because that place was a filthy hole. I'm going to take you somewhere nice," she replied patronisingly, in a tone of voice that completely emasculated him. "But first, let's get you out of those clothes…"

His eyebrows arched in surprise, and he stepped closer to her. Hermione mimicked his movement until they were standing almost nose-to-nose. Hall bent his head towards hers, closing his eyes.

The next moment, his eyes flew open in shock as his face was thrust into a bundle of material.

"Wha-?" he stuttered, surprised that his lips had met with cloth rather than soft, inviting skin.

Hermione smiled with false sweetness and gave a nauseatingly cloying giggle. "Oh, did you think – oh poor thing. I meant go and get changed; I can't take you to somewhere respectable wearing those dirty robes, can I?"

"Oh, no, of course not," he said, in a blustering voice that was obviously meant to cover up his embarrassment. Even by the light of the moon, however, Hermione could see that his cheeks had flushed a little darker. She felt another twinge of guilt.

Hall's arms clutched the bundle of clothes she had shoved at him to his chest and he turned to make his way back the way they'd come, towards the pub. Before he could move, however, Hermione caught his arm.

"I see no reason to bother them again – besides, I'm fairly certain there's a rule that only customers can use their toilets. And, judging by the state of their glasses, being a patron of The Half-Moon might just kill you." She let silence fall between the two of them for an instant, but not long enough that Nic would figure out an alternative solution. "Here!" she cried, as though setting eyes on the dark alley for the first time. "Why don't you just slip in here and get changed? It won't take a second, and I won't let anyone see. Promise."

Nic looked as though he was about to protest, so Hermione did the only thing she could think of. She leant forward and captured his lips in hers, moulding herself to him. The contact only lasted for the briefest of seconds before they broke apart, but the dazed look had returned to his eyes.

"Don't keep me waiting," she said in a husky voice that she hoped could be construed as sexy. He nodded and trotted to the back alley like an obedient puppy.

_Apparently_, Hermione thought wryly, _I'm a good kisser_.

Nic returned moments later, clothed in some atrocious dress robes that reminded Hermione strongly of the ones Ron had worn to the Yule Ball in their fourth year at Hogwarts. These were a shade of vomit that the saleswoman had optimistically labelled 'puce', replete with fraying lace cuffs and colour, and several choice moth holes. There were even a few unidentifiable stains.

"Perfect," Hermione said brightly, internally fighting down a laugh. Nic seemed eager to continue where they'd left off, but Hermione stopped him by reaching out for his Quidditch robes. Nic seemed reluctant to hand them over, but acquiesced. The moment he relinquished them, Hermione murmured _Incendio_ and the treasured robes burst into flames.

"What the bloody hell are you doing?" he screamed as the bright fire devoured his most prized possession.

"I'm taking care of them. They're so dirty, you couldn't possibly think of wearing them." He made to grab them, but she danced out of his reach. She caught sight of a miniature version of her illuminated by the firelight, reflected in his wide eyes. Hermione noted with a grim satisfaction that she looked truly insane.

Nic whimpered, and Hermione was worried that he was going to burst into tears as she dropped the last remaining scrap of material on the ground where it disintegrated into ashes.

"Alrighty, then," she said, wiping her hands of the black ashes and tucking her wand away. "Let's go, shall we?" Her tone was bright again, as though she hadn't just destroyed a stranger's possession in an act of seemingly random insanity. But Nic was backing away from her, wand out and pointing at her chest as though she were a dangerous beast.

"L-leave me alone, you crazy bitch!" he shouted before turning tail and vanishing down the street that led to the Half-Moon pub, no doubt to drown his sorrows in firewhiskey. Or perhaps not firewhiskey – Hermione thought it might be too painful to think about fire at the moment.

She sighed contentedly as the door swung closed behind him, clicking her back as though she'd just finished writing up a lengthy and arduous report at the office.

_Mission accomplished_.

"Well, Granger, I had no idea you were such a heartbreaker," a voice drawled languorously from close to her ear. She screamed, nearly jumping out of her skin, and whirled around with her wand drawn defensively.

Hermione's stomach gave an unpleasant lurch as she came face to face with steely grey eyes and blond hair.

"What the hell are you doing here, Malfoy? Were you _spying_ on me?"

"This is a public place, Granger, something which you might want to consider next time you decide to put on a very private show. Or maybe you like the thrill of being watched?"

Hermione glared at his crudeness. Despite the fast-fading light, he caught the look she shot him and his smirk widened.

"Did I hit a sensitive spot? I apologise – I should have waited until there were onlookers to do that," he goaded her.

Before she knew what she was doing, she'd struck him across the face. The hand which had slapped him with an open palm flew to her mouth in shock and the other half reached out towards the man as he staggered slightly under the impact. She was caught between apologising and laughing triumphantly. Instead of doing either, however, her voice box emitted an awkward strangled noise and she cursed.

Malfoy brought a hand up to touch his stinging cheek, where the imprint of a hand was already forming. Somehow, in hitting him, she'd managed to crack that perfect mask he worked so hard to maintain. He ran the hand that had flitted to his cheek through his hair, exhaling forcefully. If Hermione didn't know the slimy git better, she'd have said he looked almost impressed as his silver eyes met hers again.

"I just couldn't keep my hands off you, Malfoy. Forgive my weak feminine nature," she said dryly. Hidden in her sarcasm was the barest hint of a real apology. She should never have lost her temper like that, but Malfoy always seemed to bring out the worst in her.

His next words made her wish she'd never apologised, even in jest. "Even dressing like a whore does nothing to make you _feminine_, Granger." The air around them, which had been pleasantly cool, suddenly turned icy. Hermione stiffened immediately, knuckles white around her wand (which she'd whipped out from her pocket again).

"What did you say?" she asked very slowly, enunciating each syllable. Her tongue seemed to puncture the spaces between each word, turning them into invisible bullets. The wind, which had died down to an almost imperceptible breeze, picked up suddenly. The swirling currents of air seemed to respond to the fury that was screaming through Hermione's veins as it whipped her hair about her face. Something deep inside Hermione, possibly her self-control, snapped in that instant. Eyes blazing, she advanced on her prey.

He took an infinitesimally small step backwards and found himself pressed against the firm bark of an oak tree. The moonlight beat down on the pair of them through its skeleton branches which reached up and tried to brush the inky darkness above them. Hermione's skin seemed to glow with a dangerous pale light as she continued to advance towards the blond male. She found herself pressing her wand tip against his throat, into the soft flesh below his Adam's apple. He looked down at her from the unnatural angle she'd forced his head to rest against the wood, unreadable silver eyes dancing in the moonlight.

"Listen to me, you filthy worm of a man – you are not better than me. You never were, and you never will be. You can go on holding on to this stupid prejudices of yours, thinking that I'm beneath you because of my blood, go on deluding yourself that you're something _special._ But you are nothing, do you hear me? Nothing." Her voice was terrifyingly low, measured and almost calm. But every word dripped from her mouth with a venom that would have burnt through even the toughest of hides. Her brown eyes, blackened by the dim light, were like blazing coals as they burnt with a violence she was struggling to contain. She leaned closer to Malfoy, delivering her final words right in his ear in a menacing whisper. Her voice was almost a caressing purr as her tongue formed the brutal, caustic insult. "You can despise me because I'm a mudblood, but I loathe you with every fibre of my being because you are a rotten, evil little prick."

Until the words left her mouth, she'd had no idea how vehemently she'd meant them. But now, standing panting in the moonlight facing a man who was heaving equally heavy breaths, she felt as though some huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Carrying around that knot of intense hatred for a fellow human being for so many years had been eating her away from the inside, but she hadn't realised until she'd finally managed to voice it. In using the most profane insult of the wizarding world against herself, she'd effectively destroyed its power over her.

_I am a mudblood!_ she felt like howling at the moon. As though she'd surfaced from a murky pond, she began to see that it was a badge of honour rather than a black stain against her name.

The anger still roared in her ears but she faced her adversary with a straighter back and a head held higher. He was not her superior simply because he'd been born into the 'right' family. Nor, for that matter, was he her inferior because he'd been indoctrinated to a certain way of life. They were, and had always been, equals.

Malfoy gazed back at her, utterly speechless. His mouth was set in a grim line of determination, jaw clenched as though bracing against another onslaught. She caught his gaze and held it levelly, barely noticing as her breathing slowed until their chests rose and fell in unison. Neither one dared to blink, scared to shatter the soft quiet that had settled over them like a cloak, and so grey eyes and brown eyes continued to melt into one another endlessly until time itself seemed no longer to matter. They stood thus in utter silence so long that Hermione began to feel dew seeping into her clothes.

Hermione closed her eyes, blotting out the image of Malfoy stark white against the backdrop of the dark trunk. Hermione felt her fingers uncurl from the stiffly balled fists she hadn't been aware she'd been holding, and she flexed her fingers one by one in a very feline gesture. She inhaled, deeply, tasting the earthy night on her tongue as the cool air slipped down her throat. Fainter, much fainter and almost drowned out entirely by the perfumes of nature, was the scent of Malfoy.

When she opened her eyes, he was gone.

* * *

**A/N: Sorry about the wait (although, admittedly, it isn't as long as last time). This took me ages to write, mostly because I kept getting distracted and reading other people's stories and getting discouraged at how this chapter was turning out. Still, it was great fun to read and gave me loads of ideas for one-shots with pairings that I hadn't necessarily thought of before - Sirius/Remus, for example, was surprisingly adorable. I'm a much better reader than I am writer, but there we go.**

**So the Draco/Hermione fight got a little more intense and angry than it has been before. I think that's because I was researching and the things JK says about Draco don't cast him in a pleasant light - he's a pretty face, but he's also a nasty piece of work in the books. I think this fight is a little more canon, given the way Hermione lost it in PofA, but obviously it comes with deeper insults because they're (supposed to be) more mature now. I don't know, what do you guys think?**

**Also, it's my birthday soon and I wanted to get a bangle engraved with a quote from HP, but there are just so many great ones out there. What's your favourite quote of the whole series? I need inspiration!**

**Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed the last couple of chapters or added this story to alerts/favourites. It means a huge amount to me, even on days like this where I hate the chapters I put up. And so to thank my dearest readers, I'm going to write a one-shot of my 25th reviewer's choice (although I'm aware I won't hit 25 for another few chapters yet). Any pairing - the more obscure the more interesting, I think, but totally up to you, mysterious number 25 - and any time period during the series. **

**That's all I had to say, other than thanks again!**

**See you in Chapter 4, my friends.**


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

If Wilkie Twycross had seen Hermione apparating out of the moonlit park that night, the wispy little apparition instructor would have been very disappointed. Hermione was far too busy replaying the latest fight she'd had with Malfoy – noticing all the while that these fights had started to become as regular an occurrence as they were in her Hogwarts days – to focus on the three Ds. The destination was familiar enough that she could picture it easily. Her determination and deliberation were severely lacking, however.

When she disappeared with a resounding _crack_, all she could think of was the _crack_ of her hand against Malfoy's cheek. She was in such a state of distraction that she very nearly left said hand behind her at the scene of the incident. Luckily, the pain of splinching alerted her and she regained her focus once more before she could do much more damage than a cut.

All of this seemed to take several minutes in Hermione's head but in reality she had moved half-way across London in the blink of an eye. Putting pressure on her wrist to slow the trickle of blood, she walked out of the dead end alley that was the closest apparition point to her apartment. It didn't bother her to live in an all-muggle area since she had been raised as a muggle for 11 years of her life, so she rarely received odd looks from the people she passed on the street. Her job at the ministry was such that she didn't need to wear robes to work and, in any case, she tended to floo in and out of her apartment directly.

Tonight, though, she would have induced some quizzical glances in people. It was not every day that a young woman dressed to the nines walked out of a deserted, dead-end alleyway nursing a bleeding wrist with no other sign of a scuffle and no discernible attacker. Hermione was fortunate enough that no one was around to see her as she made her way down the road to her flat. Although she knew that she could lie very coolly under pressure (torture at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange was about as pressured as a situation could get), the last thing she wanted to do at that moment was enter into a lengthy discussion about how she'd managed to find herself in such a bizarre situation.

Hermione hurried down the road as quickly as her heels would allow her to move, cursing the decision to wear those ridiculous shoes in the first place. She was much more comfortable in little ballerina flats and the clothes she was wearing now felt so alien to her. The entire night, she'd had to pretend to be something, someone that she wasn't. Her only moment of honesty, she realised with a shock that sent a chill to the bottom of her stomach, was with Malfoy.

It had worked, though. All of her lying, her scheming and her acting had certainly paid off tonight. Just the look on Nic Hall's face as he hurtled away from her, making the ashes of his robes swirl into the air like a flurry of black snow, was payment enough for her sore feet. He had been horrified enough at her actions that his testimonial against her would cast her in exactly the sort of negative light she'd been hoping for. There was no way in hell he'd still want to marry her. Hermione gleefully crossed his name off of the mental list she was now always carrying around. A list that was still much too long for her liking. A list, she remembered with another unpleasant jolt, which still included Malfoy.

And, just like that, her mind was back on him again. As she strode down the pavement, illuminated regularly by the yellowish glow of street lamps and then cast back into shadows, thoughts scurried through her mind like a swarm of insects.

_What could that scheming bastard possibly want from me_?

_We have nothing in common, other than our mutual hatred for one another. _

_How is that good grounds for a marriage proposal? _

_Why in the name of Merlin's saggy y-fronts did he propose to me, then?_

And then there were more thoughts, more dangerous thoughts which she quashed almost as soon as they burst into life.

_How did he escape a trial?_

_ – Shut up, why do you even care? That's all in the past now. _

_What happened to his mother? _

_– Oh, now you're asking about his family? Feel like having a reunion with Auntie Bellatrix?_

_What's he doing now? _

_– Seriously, why do you care? What relevance could that possibly have?_

_What was he doing in the park so late anyway?_

_ – Does it matter? _

_What if he was stalking me or something?_

_ – Don't flatter yourself, why would _he_ stalk _you?

_Why did I hit him? _

_– You lost control, it happens. _

_Not to me, not anymore. _

_– He was being a dick anyway, he deserved it. You know he deserved it. _

_So why do I feel so guilty about it, then?_

_Why did he just stand there and take it? _

_Why did he let me have the last word?_

_Why did he leave? _

_– SHUT UP, HERMIONE._

* * *

The next morning, Hermione woke up with what felt like a stunning hangover. Except that it couldn't possibly be a hangover, because she hadn't been drinking the night before. Had she?

She glared at the sunlight as it streamed through the gap in her curtains and directly on to her face, then realised that glaring hurt even more, so closed her eyes again. Better, but not perfect. She could still feel the blood pounding out a drum beat against her skull and her head was spinning nauseatingly. Then, out of nowhere, came the most horrible sound she'd ever heard in her life. A rhythmic shrill beeping that tore through her ears and shredded what was left of her brain.

_What the FUCK is that noise?_

Hands over her ears, Hermione clawed her way out of her tangle of bedsheets, cracking her eyes open just enough to be able to see where she was going but not enough for that torturous thing people called sunlight to hurt. She tried to hunt for the source of the noise without moving more than the bare minimum – any more than that and she felt dangerously close to throwing up. What was happening to her?

Before she had time to ponder this question, she finally caught sight of a little orb of pulsing blue light which was emitting the shrill pips of noise. She rounded on the offensive object, snarling.

"_You,_" she hissed at it with murder in her voice. "Shut up!"

Predictably, the little ball of light ignored her entirely and continued to send out wave after wave of ear-splitting noise. Hermione looked around for her wand which was not, as usually was, on her bedside table in its designated pot. After several minutes of hunting while standing utterly still – she wasn't quite up for movement yet – she located it in a vase of flowers on her windowsill. Ignoring its bizarre location for the moment, she focused on the bigger problem at hand.

"Conclusit!" she exclaimed, jabbing her wand in the general direction of the sound while simultaneously shutting her eyes so as not to be blinded by the wandlight which streaked across the room and hit its target.

Once the torment of the sound had stopped, Hermione stumbled half-blind to the bathroom where she clambered into a warm shower gratefully. She'd never heard her alarm ring before now, having always woken up at least ten minutes before it was set to go off. Hermione groaned and pressed her head against the cool tile of the wall, letting the warm water run in rivulets down her body. The contrast of the two temperatures felt good against her skin and eased her throbbing headache. Her mouth felt fuzzy and as she smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth experimentally she tasted some lingering foulness. She raised her head and captured some of the cascading water in her mouth to rinse it out. With her face angled up towards the showerhead she was almost lulled to sleep by the caressing feel of the water as it slithered down the length of her body.

Hermione's peacefulness was disturbed when her stomach gave an unpleasant roll. Mrs Gupta from the apartment downstairs was cooking breakfast for her husband and their six children, and the smells of spices was wafting through the open bathroom window. Whatever was in her stomach churned with a loud gurgling noise.

Hermione could no longer ignore the evidence in front of her – she was most definitely hungover. Unfortunately, she still had no recollection of having drunk anything other than the tiniest sip of that horrible pink cocktail back at the pub. The last thing she remembered, in fact, was slipping her shoes off by the door and padding towards the kitchen to make herself a snack.

Hermione shut off the water with a sigh, wrapping herself in a big white towel before the heat that was coming off of her body in little swirls of steam had entirely evaporated. She made her way back into her bedroom and began looking for things to wear. This process was not a lengthy one, as she didn't really have many clothes, but every movement made her head screech with pain. Most of her clothes had accumulated in a giant pile on her rocking chair, so it was here she headed first. She sniffed a few shirts, pulling out the one that smelled freshest and throwing it onto the bed behind her. She found herself a dress that didn't look too rumpled and it joined the shirt on the bed. Underwear was not a problem, as she had long since stopped trying to coordinate her bra and pants and just settled for whatever was closest to hand. She dressed herself slowly, pausing from time to time as her stomach gave another unpleasant lurch and threatened to show her exactly what she'd consumed the night before, but eventually the arduous task was done and she headed out towards the kitchen.

She'd intended to grab a quick bite to go, as was her custom, but that plan flew out of the window the moment she saw the state of her kitchen.

Apparently, she'd not only tried to fix herself several different types of cocktails, she'd also attempted to make dinner while completely inebriated. The wall and the majority of the far wall were splattered with red, the source of which appeared to be the food processor. It seemed she'd tried her hand at making a Bloody Mary at some point during the night but had failed to put the lid on the blender before blending the ingredients.

There was a slice of charred toast, blackened almost beyond recognition, sticking out from the toaster and another less burnt one half eaten on a plate in the sink. The tap was dripping on the bread and it had bloated like a sponge full of water. There was also cheese everywhere, including copious amounts underfoot. From this, Hermione gathered that she'd tried to make herself a grilled cheese sandwich. Reluctantly, she picked her way through the debris that littered her floor and opened the toastie-maker with a great deal of trepidation. The cheese that was stuck to both faces had melted and then hardened again, forming a bubbly crust which she knew would be a nightmare to scrape off. Wishing fervently that she'd bothered to learn household spells from Molly when she'd had the chance, she attacked her kitchen as ferociously as she could manage with cleaning charms.

By the time she'd finished, her hair was completely dry and her head was pounding worse than ever.

"Pepperup potion, pepperup potion, pepperup potion," she murmured to herself as she scanned the names on the vials in one of her cupboards. "Aha!"

She grabbed the small vial, hoping that it would have an effect on her horrible symptoms. Technically, it was supposed to alleviate the symptoms of colds, but Hermione felt justified in taking it given that she felt as though twenty different strains of colds had attacked her at the same time. Her headache cleared up a little bit as she drained the last drop, but it was still noticeably present. She'd ask Lucy when she got to the office if there wasn't something else she could take.

_Speaking of the office_… Hermione glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall (upon which the traces of red splatters were still visible) and noticed with a shock that she was already late for work. That had never happened to her before. Not once since she'd left Hogwarts had she been late for her job.

She hurried to the fireplace, ignoring the protests of her body as she moved faster than it wanted to go. Hermione grabbed a pinch of floo powder with one hand and lit the fire with the other, pausing only to admire the fireplace as she did so. It was the reason she'd bought the apartment outright. The location of the flat wasn't that great and there was no study so she was forced to work either in the open plan living room/kitchen or in her bedroom. But the fireplace was magnificent, a masterpiece of tastefully carved marble, and the floors were original 17th century hardwood, so she'd taken it.

She cast another appraising look around the place that had become her home before throwing the powder into the fire, stepping into the green flames and shouting "Ministry of Magic". She was pulled through the usual maze of fireplaces and emerged gracefully (or, at least, as gracefully as one could emerge from a fireplace) in the atrium of the Ministry of Magic. Hermione dusted herself down, brushing the soot she'd accumulated on her clothes when she'd been pulled through a fireplace no one had bothered to clean in a while on her way to work.

_And Mum complained about having to take the train to work_. She smiled at the memory of her mother coming home after a long day and ranting about another man who'd taken up two seats (one for him and one for his precious briefcase) on a crowded train.

It had been a long time since she had permitted herself to think of her parents but now, as if she'd opened the floodgates, the memories rose unbidden before her eyes like poor ghosts. They flashed in sequence; her life in a string of sepia-tinted images. She stepped into the atrium fully and performed the usual checking-in rituals unconsciously, her eyes focused on the past.

_"Look, mumma, look what I can do!"_

_Hermione saw herself as a pudgy seven year old, her body still coated with puppy fat. She was sitting on her bed, her mother standing at the door and smiling fondly down at her. Hermione narrowed her eyes, concentrating hard on the book open on the bed before her. For a moment, nothing happened, and present Hermione could see her mother thinking up some appeasing nonsense to feed to her daughter. Then the book began to rise off of the duvet. It hovered a few inches in the air, high enough that it was clearly not an illusion or a trick of the light. Hermione's mother's green eyes widened in surprise._

_"Richard! I think you'd better come and see this," she called over her shoulder, breaking her daughter's concentration and causing the book to fall back on the bed with a soft thump._

_"What is it, love?"_

_Hermione's father appeared at the door and the two of them stood on the verge of her room, leaning in equal part upon one another and the door frame._

_"Mimi, show your daddy what you just did," her mother said coaxingly. The child smiled fondly at her two parents and, tucking a strand of already-unmanageably frizzy hair behind her ear, turned her attentions on the book once more._

The noise of the elevator grille being slid into place with a _clink_ caused that memory to fade and another one to take its place.

_"You heard what the nurse said –"_

_The clink of glass on the marble counter was muffled by the wall to which Hermione had pressed her ear. She was ten, now, but was quickly realising that with every year she grew, the atmosphere in her house became more strained. _

_"That nurse is an idiot." Her mother's voice was distorted by the wall but she could still hear the anger in it. "How did they even link it to her? Hermione hasn't misbehaved a day in her life."_

_"I know, sweetheart," her father replied, obviously trying to placate her. Hermione could picture him stepping towards his wife, hands held up with open palms. It was a symbol of surrender, and also one that promised the comfort of a hug. _

_"I mean, those boys were being absolutely foul towards her – I would have done the same thing in her position." This statement was accompanied by another loud clink as a plate landed on the sideboard._

_"I wish I could have put every kid who teased me on the roof when I was at school, life would have been much easier." _

_Her mother let out a strangled chuckle that was an odd cross between a laugh and a cry._

_"Our little girl is so strong," her father said. There was a rustling of cloth as though he'd finally managed to pull her mother into his strong arms. "No matter what they say, she'll be fine."_

_"She'll be better than fine, Rich. She'll be amazing."_

_"She _is_ amazing."_

_Her father turned the radio on and music drowned out their low voices. Lulled by the music which crept through the plaster, pervaded by sounds of clattering dishes as the washing up resumed in earnest, Hermione leaned her head against the cool white wall._

A wall which promptly dissolved, melting away to reveal the inside of one of the Ministry elevators. She'd missed her floor. Thankfully, it seemed that no one else in the elevator had noticed that she'd been too caught up in the past to worry about the present. She left the elevator at its next stop and headed towards the nearest staircase.

Hermione ducked as an interdepartmental memo soared over her head, and once again she was sucked back into her memories.

_It was the morning of Hermione's 11__th__ birthday, and she was sitting at the table with her mother. Her father had gone to grab the post, followed down the corridor by cries of _Don't spend too long chatting with the postman, the bacon will go cold!

_Hermione agreed wholeheartedly with her mother that her father should spend as little time making small-talk as possible. There was a full English breakfast sitting on the plate in front of her, and she couldn't wait to tuck in. She also had yet to open her presents and blow out her candles. With minimal delay, her father reappeared in the kitchen clutching a handful of envelopes. Some brightly coloured ones were clearly birthday cards from relatives, and a couple were bills addressed to her father. Hermione ducked as he chucked an envelope over her head at her mother, who failed to catch it. It wasn't hard to see who she'd inherited her distinct lack of sporting ability from. Her mother dived under the table, grumbling, while her father deposited a pile of letters by her plate._

_She reached out to open the top one but her father swatted her hand away playfully._

_"Eat first, spend ages opening your envelopes without ripping them later," he joked. Hermione didn't argue and eagerly tucked into her piping hot breakfast treat._

_When the last scrap of food had disappeared from the table – and that was a surprisingly short time later, given the amount of food that had been there in the first place – Hermione reached for the pile of cards._

_She ignored the jokes her parents made about the way she opened each envelope carefully as though it contained glass rather than a sturdy birthday card, and read the messages inside. Most children her age gave cards a cursory glance (except when they contained money) and tore open the presents instead, but Hermione was not like most children. Finally, though, she only had one envelope yet to open. It was a pure white envelope and the address was written in a handwriting she did not recognise. That was not the only thing that was odd about the outside of the envelope._

_The address had been written in emerald green ink and read:_

_Hermione Jean Granger,_

_The Chair Facing the Window,_

_The Kichen of 64 Hyde Vale,_

_Greenwich, London_

_SE10 8RF_

Well, that was weirdly specific_. Hermione tossed the thought away with a shrug of her shoulder, and flipped the envelope over. It was sealed with a wax seal bearing a funny sort of coat of arms. This was certainly not a letter from a relative – unless they were playing a practical joke. Her cousins always said she read too many 'old books', but this sort of elaborate prank would doubtless never have occurred to them._

_She slipped the envelope open, feeling a disproportionately large pang when she broke the waxy seal, and her brown eyes scanned the letter enclosed. With a mother's instinct Mrs Weasley would have been proud of, Hermione's mother rushed to her side._

_"What is it, Mimi?" she asked, pushing stray locks of hair out of her daughter's face the better to read it._

_Still silent, Hermione handed the letter to her mother whose green eyes tripped down the page as quickly as her daughter's had done._

_"What's the matter, Anne?" Hermione's father asked, looking between his wife and daughter with worry in his eyes._

_"This letter… this letter says our daughter's a witch."_

Hermione slammed into a glass door which, in her reverie, she'd not seen. The fleeting pain and the lingering embarrassment anchored her in the present for a little while, long enough for her to check that no one had seen her mortifying collision. The coast was clear and she hurried down a red-walled corridor that she hoped would lead her to her office. It had been a while since she'd attempted to navigate the ministry entirely by foot.

She walked past an open door and was hit with a sudden wave of heat as a toaster belched out flames.

"Oops, sorry!" a youngish wizard sporting several recent burns and a pair of singed, smoking eyebrows called out to Hermione but she did not hear him. Once again, she'd been transported back into her memories.

_Hermione stepped out of the airport and into the blazing Australian sun, hit by such a powerful wave of heat that she nearly stumbled. Already sweating, she shouldered her bag and headed towards an unoccupied taxi._

_"G'day, miss, how can I help you?" The Australian accent of the taxi driver, familiar only from films and television programmes she'd watched as a child, greeted her as she hauled herself onto the leather seat. She was grateful for the air-conditioning inside the car which had been turned up full blast to combat the sweltering heat outside. _

_She gave him the address and the tanned man at the wheel smiled at her._

_"This your first visit to Brizzie?"_

_"Brizzie?" she repeated, a question in her voice._

_"Brisbane, love," he replied genially. She could just hear him laughing mentally at how much of a tourist she was._

_"How long will it take to get to Wynnum Esplanade?" she asked, countering his question with one of her own. Hermione was perhaps being paranoid, but she certainly didn't want to give away too much information to a total stranger. It was bad enough that she had to trust him to herd her to the right place and not rip her off by charging an arm and a leg in taxi fare. Hermione slipped her hand into her pocket and circled her fingers around the comforting wooden wand that was nestled there._

_"Alright, I get it. Mind your own bizzo, Sam, stop earbashing the poor Brit." After admonishing himself, the taxi driver turned up the radio and let music fill the silence between them._

_It seemed like forever before he pulled up in front of a white clapboard house that faced out to sea. The flowers that grew in regular beds in front of the house were colourful and well cared-for. Even with her modified memory, her mother had not lost her love of plants. It made Hermione's heart constrict with a painful rush of love for the parents who no longer knew her._

_Hermione handed the correct amount of money to the driver and got out of the car. He didn't wait an instant before shooting off down the road in a cloud of fine dust. Hermione stood and stared at the blue sea, going over the story she had formulated before she'd left. Then, realising that she could delay no longer, she stepped into the garden and closed the white picket fence behind her._

_She heard the doorbell ring inside the depths of the house and then the door opened to reveal her father. Hermione hadn't prepared herself to see the face of her father again after so long. He looked good, his t-shirt and shorts revealing tanned skin. He was happy, contentment engraved into every line in his face (of which there were more than she remembered). Hermione was aware that he was staring at her strangely, so she gathered her wits and spoke._

_"Mr Wilkins?" she asked tentatively as though she didn't know for sure that the man in front of her was Wendell Wilkins, formerly Richard Granger, her father._

_"Yes?" He looked at her suspiciously, blocking entry to his house with his body. She felt another surge of painful emotion as she stared at her father, ever protective of his little family._

_"I'm here on behalf of Alton & Son Solicitors. May I come in?" The name registered vaguely in his memory, as she had known it would. He stepped back and opened the door wide._

_"Of course, come on in."_

_Her father ushered her into the sitting room which was decorated in hues of blue and white._

_"Can I get you anything to drink? Cup of tea? Glass of lemonade? My wife makes the best lemonade around," he said proudly._

I know,_ his daughter felt like replying. Instead, she stuck to her plan. "No, thank you. Is your wife around?"_

_"She's just having a nap in the back garden. What's this about?"_

_"I think it's best for both of you to be here. If you wouldn't mind waking her…"_

_Hermione trailed off, and her father nodded curtly. The worry in his eyes was plain to see. He bustled out of the door, returning a few minutes later with Anne Granger, now Monica Wilkins, in tow. Hermione's mother was as tanned as her father, wearing a white summer dress that dropped to her ankles. She looked a lot younger than Hermione remembered – obviously the move to Australia had done wonders for her stress level. Her green eyes were full of laughter and happiness._

_Hermione drank all of this in quickly, not wanting to stare rudely at the woman who thought her daughter was a stranger._

_"Mr and Mrs Wilkins, I've been sent here to tell you in person that your great uncle," she paused and nodded in her father's direction, "Mortimer Frume, passed away recently."_

_Her parents let out small gasps of surprise._

_"I hadn't seen Uncle Morty in years," her father said to his wife. "Not since I was a little boy."_

_"He remembered you fondly in his will, Mr Wilkins. That is why I have been sent here – I'm afraid you must return to England to deal with the legal side of the matter and to collect what has been left to you."_

_"What… what did he leave me?"_

_"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to disclose the specifics, but I believe it was a sum of money."_

_"Oh, Wendell! Isn't this perfect?" Hermione's mother spoke for the first time, joy evident in her voice._

_"My wife doesn't mean any disrespect to Uncle Morty, but truth be told, this couldn't have come at a better time," her father said conspiratorially, smiling dotingly at his wife._

_"Oh?" _

_"You see, she's 5 months pregnant."_

_At that simple sentence, the bottom of Hermione's world seemed to fall away and she was left clinging to the light blue sofa for dear life. She hadn't seen it before, when her mother had walked in, because the long floating summer dress had hidden the bump almost entirely. Now that her mother was seated, Hermione saw the way that one hand rested protectively over the bump that indicated the growing baby._

_Hermione didn't know what to say. Her plan had fallen to pieces, disintegrated utterly before her eyes. How could she reverse the memory charm on her parents now? Her mother would have no idea why she was pregnant and it could very well permanently damage her sanity._

Oh God oh God oh God oh God.

_Hermione had never been a religious person, but her chant of despair took on the appearance of a desperate prayer. She felt close to tears, gulping down the impossibly large ball of tears in her throat._

_"Congratulations!" she said, with false cheer._

_"Thank you," her mother replied softly, looking down at her belly with an impossible amount of love in her eyes. "It's going to be a girl."_

_"Really? How wonderful!" Hermione knew that she was being too jolly, but it was either that or break down in front of two strangers who used to be her parents. "Have you got any names picked out?"_

_"Yes, we've settled on Hermione."_

"Hermione?" The call from her memories was echoed by a voice that didn't belong to the past. Lucy was staring up at her with worried eyes. "What are you doing in the corridor? And why are you so late?" she asked as Hermione blinked away the tendrils of the scene she'd just been reliving. She was grateful Lucy had interrupted her at that moment, because she didn't want to have to see herself raise a wand to her parents for the second time in her life, cast a memory charm and flee the house in floods of tears. It had been painful enough living that experience once.

Was she late? Oh, yes, she'd had a bit of trouble that morning. Reality pushed memories to the side and her brain struggled to focus through the haze of her headache, which had returned in full. She winced, rubbing her temples. The gesture was not missed by Lucy, whose shrewd eye immediately gaged the situation correctly.

"Hungover, are we? I take it everything went to plan," she said, grinning and steering Hermione into the safety of her office by the elbow. "Here," she continued, thrusting a small vial of bright red liquid at her. "It's a miracle worker, that potion. Clears up even the worst hangovers and leaves you eager to tell me all about your night."

The crystal vial was labelled _Acrapulus_, not a potion Hermione had ever come across. Then again, she hadn't gotten drunk in a very long time, so she'd never really had the occasion to stumble across such a miraculous remedy.

Miraculous was certainly the right word to describe it – mere minutes after swallowing it, she found that all her symptoms had dissipated. _As if by magic,_ she thought wryly.

"Better?" Lucy asked, settling herself in her customary chair opposite Hermione's desk.

"Much, thank you."

"So, tell me all about last night then. Did you manage to convince him you weren't going to be his blushing bride?"

"Oh, I think so. I mean, he ran off screaming into the night that I was a – how did he put it? – a crazy bitch. So no, I don't think we'll be skipping down the aisle any time soon."

Lucy clapped her hands together gleefully, looking like a mischievous imp.

"What happened, then?" she asked, prompting Hermione subtly to spill the beans. Hermione was loathe to relive the entire night in full so she just gave her a brief synopsis, subtly leaving out the part where she'd encountered Malfoy. That was need-to-know only.

"… And then I burnt his robes. I think that's when he snapped, poor lamb."

Lucy let out peals of laughter, much louder than they should have been. People were going to start to wonder what was so funny about Goblin Legislation that would merit such mirth. Hermione shushed the younger woman quickly, but allowed herself a small grin.

"So, what's the next step?" Lucy asked after she'd caught her breath.

"I only need three testimonials, so I guess now we just need to pick two more… victims." Hermione couldn't quite keep the relish out of her voice. Although she knew it wasn't right to enjoy donning these different, damning personalities in order to hurt others, she couldn't help but like the idea that she was slowly but surely regaining control over her life.

Lucy picked up on the enjoyment in Hermione's voice and grinned, watching her boss attentively. When Hermione didn't move to pick up one of the folders littering her desk, Lucy prompted her gently.

"Draco Malfoy?"

Hermione quirked an eyebrow at the girl in front of her, wondering if it was possible that she'd heard about their altercation last night.

"What makes you say that?"

"Everyone knows he's a former Death Eater, and he's quite respected in the community. If even that sort of man declares that he refuses to take you as his bride, word will spread to others and you'll receive no more proposals."

This had been a worry of Hermione's: that soon she would receive another shower of letters from the Marriage Law office all asking for her hand in marriage. If she could somehow begin to spread the word of her newly unbearable personality, she would surely dissuade potential suitors entirely. Some of those who had already offered themselves would withdraw too, and would considerably lighten the load of worry Hermione seemed to carry around in her mind permanently.

"You're right. We don't get along at all, so I'm sure he'd be delighted to withdraw that proposal."

"Oh, you know him?" Lucy asked, her eyes glittering with a light Hermione didn't like very much. Her voice had taken on a breathy, dreamy quality as though she were daydreaming. "What's he like in person?"

"I don't _know _him. We went to Hogwarts together, and he was an insufferable git." Hermione's irritation was building. Surely the girl didn't have a crush on Malfoy?

"Really? He seems lovely," she cooed. "He's a freelance journalist now and his autobiography came out a couple of months ago. He signed my copy – he has the prettiest handwriting! And, oh, his book made me cry so much; the heart-wrenching tale of a little boy who only wants to please his father. Come to think of it, I think he mentions you in it somewhere…"

Hermione's gut lurched inexplicably.

"He does? – I mean, that's beside the point. I'll do my research and see what angle I'll have to play. And if he's a journalist, then it'll be easier for me to get the word out about how very unsuitable I am to be anyone's wife."

"I can't believe you went to school with Draco Malfoy; it must have been amazing for you."

"Not so much, no." Hermione distinctly remembered an episode where her teeth had grown out of her mouth at an alarming rate. Malfoy had always been loathsome towards her. She fiddled with the hem of her skirt trying to rein in the bad memories that Malfoy had created for her, locking them away and changing the subject as quickly as possible.

"Who else should we make a witness, Lucy?"

"What about Ron Weasley?"

Hermione's head snapped up and she fixed Lucy with a cold stare, suddenly on the defensive.

"What about him?"

"You know more about him than anything that can be found in a Ministry file, don't you?"

"He was – _is_ – my best friend."

"Exactly. Maybe if you told him what your plan was –"

"I can't do that, the judge will ask for memories as proof. If they even suspect that I've asked people to lie, all of this will have been for nothing." Hermione accentuated her words with a wave at her desk where the evidence of their hard (and illegal) work lay in disordered piles.

"Oh." Lucy seemed stumped, but it was mere seconds before she spoke again. "Ron Weasley is the logical choice, you know."

_Damn her for appealing to my logical side_.

Hermione opened her mouth to protest again, but Lucy barrelled on.

"Just hear me out; if you still disagree after you hear what my arguments are, then I'll drop it. Okay?"

Hermione nodded and Lucy looked relieved that she would, at least, be allowed to explain her reasoning. The girl was audacious, that's for sure.

"Whether you like it or not, everyone knows exactly who you are and what you've done for the wizarding community. That doesn't make you above the rules, but it does give what you say a lot more weight. I watched the Death Eater trials at first, before I applied for this job, and I saw how everyone responded to you when you spoke. They trusted you and valued your opinion above everyone else's. You were so much younger than them, too - the youngest witch on the Wizengamot in history – but it didn't seem to matter. Your testimonials, for or against, swayed the jury.

Ron Weasley, like you, is a third of the Golden Trio. That means that his word will be as determining as yours. Besides, everybody knows that you two have some sort of romantic history; all the magazines have speculated about it endlessly. If this man, who has been publically associated with you romantically, says that he would never in a million years marry you… Can't you see? They'd declare you unweddable immediately."

"He's my friend," Hermione repeated weakly, although she knew that Lucy's argument was extremely convincing.

"That's what will make it so much more convincing. He's the closest thing you have to family, now. He's the best character reference you could hope for; you couldn't have planned it better yourself."

Something inside her recoiled horribly at the thought of having to hurt Ron for such selfish reasons. They had left things hanging in the air for so long, unresolved issues that neither had wanted to bring up, that to finally slam that door shut would be difficult. Even before the marriage proposal, things had been strained between them. They made sure that they were never left alone in a room together for fear that they would finally have to have _that_ conversation. And now, Ron had made the first move – a reckless one at that, for such a cautious chess player. He had forced her hand and Hermione was worried that her actions would pain him.

"But I can't hurt Ron like that." It was a whisper of feebleness, an admission of failure. In that moment, Hermione hated herself for her weakness. Everything she had planned, everything the two girls had worked for would come unravelling at a terrifying speed if she did not.

"I think it's time you decide what you want more: love or friendship."

* * *

**I apologise (again) for the length between updates, and also for the fact that this chapter is very much a filler chapter and contains no Dramione interaction. I feel terrible about the lack of sexy conflict, believe me. However, this chapter does give a bit more information about Hermione's background and sets up the next major bits of plot and by the time I was finished with this section, it was too long to be part of a chapter.**

**I promise you all that there will be vast amounts of Dramione in the chapters to come, so don't worry.**

**Also, once again, a big big thank you to all of you who reviewed/put this story on alert. I've never had so many reviews before! I also didn't think I'd get to 25 on the strength of the last chapter, but I did, so the one-shot I promised is up. It's called Wrackspurts and it's a Blaise/Luna thingy that's very very short.**

**If that's your sort of thing, then by all means check it out. As an even bigger token of my appreciation to all of you who read this (even you, silent readers, I see you and love you), I'm going to attempt to be more regular with updating. Although holidays are over now and I have exams to prepare for. Dramione is clearly more important than exam results.**

**You all make me want to cry with happiness when you say lovely things, so thank you again. (Concrit is always loved too, so if you ever want to say nasty things, I will absolutely take them on board. Don't be afraid, my pretties.)**


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